A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey

One Minute Monologues 041

I do not know how I missed
Billie Holiday’s aria “Strange Fruit”
recorded in 1939
about lynching’s in the south,
but there is no reason for you to miss it:

This should be required listening
for everyone world wide
as a reminder of where we have been,
of where we have come from,
of what our legacy is
and what we must denounce,
call out,
oppose,
and avoid,
now and forever,
on every level of society and culture
down to the most trivial expression
of racism,
bigotry,
prejudice,
white supremacy,
separatism
intolerance
and discrimination.
It is an apt reminder
of what we are encouraging
nationally/politically
with the current relaxing
of civil rights standards
in voting rights
and education,
and a call to wake up
and stand firm
in our national (and personal)
commitment to equality,
liberty,
and justice for all.

We live with a foot in two worlds
and walk two paths at the same time.
There is what we do to pay the bills.
And there is what we pay the bills to do.
To make this work,
we have to live in one world
with an eye on the other world.
We can never lose sight of the other world!
We live in this world–
whichever world “this world” happens to be–
in light of that world.
Our life in this world
is informed by our life in that world.
We cannot lose sight of either world,
or ever allow ourselves to think
that this world
(whichever world “this world” happens to be)
is the only world.
We maintain the tension,
live within the contradiction,
bear the pain–
consciously,
intentionally,
mindfully,
compassionately,
with grace and kindness
for all concerned
every step of the way.
That’s the way to do it.
The way it must be done.

I am,
you are,
he/she/it is
we all are
“the still point
of the turning world.”
The world revolves around us.
We bring the world into focus.
We take it all in.
Organize,
order,
reorder,
differentiate,
categorize,
decipher,
determine,
dissect,
discern,
decide,
experience,
explore,
evaluate,
filter,
prioritize,
regulate,
consider,
reconsider,
reflect,
question,
inquire,
investigate,
integrate,
realize,
connect,
harmonize,
comprehend,
understand,
interpret,
articulate,
feel,
sense,
grasp,
wonder,
imagine,
play,
laugh,
,
and do it all
again
and again,
making sense,
finding meaning,
making meaning,
sharing meaning
with each other
and all people
for the true good of the whole
every day
throughout our life/our lives.
It’s what we do,
and are to do,
and must do.
Slowing it down
by seeing,
hearing,
understanding,
knowing,
doing,
being,
and enjoying it all.

10/29/2017 — I have a theory
about a lot of things–
everything if I think about it,
but who can think about everything?
And though we as a species
have always been in search
of the one unifying theory
which makes sense of all things,
it’s because that would
save us the trouble of theorizing
about every single thing.
At least, that’s my theory.
A theory is different from an opinion.
I know people who have an opinion
about everything,
but they don’t think about anything.
Opinions are a substitute
for one unifying theory.
They save us the trouble of theorizing
about every single thing.
We are all over saving ourselves trouble
by not thinking.
That’s one of the things we do best
as a species.
It’s our specialty.
Which is another theory of mine.
We are into saving ourselves trouble
because our lives are so exhausting.
It wears us out being alive.
Balancing all the things we have to balance.
We are awash in contradictions
and dichotomies
and incompatibilities.
It wears us out.
We sleep as much as possible
just to get away from it all–
and all of our escapes, diversions and distractions
are ways of putting ourselves to sleep
so that we don’t have to think about
our contradictions, dichotomies, and incompatibilities.
But, that’s where we live,
and if we are going to be alive,
we have to wake up
and be mindfully aware
of what’s what with us
in the time and place of our living.
And thinking up theories
to help us deal with it all.
At least, that’s my theory.

10/29/2017 — Trump will save his people
from the things they detest:
Socialism,
black people,
immigrants,
feminists,
Muslims,
LGBTQ’s,
Latinos,
foreigners,
liberals,
Democrats,
etc.
And save for them the things they love:
guns
and Jeeesus.
Trump can do anything he pleases
as long as he provides his base
with what they long for.
And they will do anything for him.

10/29/2017— The quiet times are when it all comes crashing down on us, all of our losses, mistakes, wrong turns, bad decisions, all of the things we have done and the things that have been done to us. This is the Buddha under the Bo Tree, Jesus in the wilderness. It’s terrible. The trial and ordeal par excellence! It’s the angle with the flaming sword guarding the entrance to paradise. There is no peace without bearing the pain of the silence that harbors “the still small voice.” But who can bear it? Who can stand it? That’s the quandary. “What a slippery slope this is! It’s like the edge of a razor!”

There is an aversion to stillness, solitude and silence worldwide across time. We can think ourselves to death! And so, we have to counter the “death-trap thinking” with awareness of it–holding it in our awareness in a “this too, this too,” kind of way, and expanding our awareness beyond the despair to the realization of our identity with the whole of humanity, and the wellspring from which life itself springs, in recognizing the existence of “more than meets the eye,” and experiencing ourselves as being upheld and encouraged by “more than words can say,” and called beyond our anguish to that which has need of us “even now,” “nevertheless, even so,” and live on in the strength of “the everlasting arms,” without going over into theology and doctrine, but staying, mindfully, with the experience without trying to explain, understand, control, own, possess that which possesses us.

10/29/2017 — Sheldon Kopp said,
“Some things can be experienced,
but not understood,
and some things can be understood,
but not explained.”
This is the foundation of all good religion.
Bad religion attempts–
through its theologies and doctrines–
to explain what cannot be understood,
to understand what can only be experienced.
We only have to open ourselves to the experience
of the truth at the ground of existence–
which is as close as stillness and silence,
as art, music, and nature,
as a mother’s touch,
a child’s laughter…
and let that be that.

10/29/2017 — We have to know what exhausts us,
depletes us,
and avoid it where possible,
and compensate ourselves for it
when unavoidable.
Compensation is essential soul-care
and is not to be neglected or delayed.
It is necessary for balance and sanity,
and for maintaining heart and spirit
for the trials and ordeals
of the journey.

Would you go to hell for your life?
For the sake of your life?
To be able to live your life?
Or,
Is your life itself the hell
you are trying to escape?
These questions are at the core
of every addiction.
What are we living for?
Another high?
What is the nature of our highs?
What is our drug of choice?
What are we running from?
Refusing to face?
Refusing to do?
What is so hard about our life?
What are we living for?
What would it take
for us to spring out of the bed
each morning,
eager to step into the day?
Ready for whatever the day
has to offer?
Looking forward to the experience
of exploring another day?
Everyone who is addicted
to something other than their life
is cut off from their life–
from the life that is their life to live–
and is living an inauthentic existence
in the wasteland of endless discontent.
How to escape the escapes
is their problem.
How to find the way back
to authenticity–
to the integrity of being and doing,
the oneness of who we are
and how we live,
to the life that is so genuinely “us”
that we would go through hell itself
in service to it,
in faithful devotion to the work
that is ours to do–
is the quest that calls us from escape
to freedom.
The freedom of being a liege servant
to the tasks,
the agonies,
the trials and ordeals,
of the life that is ours to live.

10/30/2017 — Adjustment and accommodation, Kid,
adjustment and accommodation!
We meet the trials and ordeals
of our life
with adjustment and accommodation.
Not with submission and surrender!
The caveat here
is that we have to be right
about being in the flow of our life
and not lost in a fantasy of our own making,
pursuing ends that are not legitimately our ends,
forcing outcomes we have no business seeking,
and being at odds with purposes
that are truly ours.
When we are on track,
on the beam,
at one with the intention
working its will through us,
and serving the gifts that are ours to serve,
then obstacles and setbacks
are tests of our mettle,
and call us forth
to champion our own life
against all opposition–
and that is where adjustment and accommodation
come into play.
The stream finds a path
around all obstructions,
and in every life
there are times
to take No! for an answer.
When to do what
is the call only we can make.

10/30/2017 — Integrity–the achievement
and maintenance
of integrity–
is the work of our lifetime.
We never complete it,
and must never lay it aside.
Carl Jung said,
“If a person wants to be cured
(of his/her neurosis) it is necessary to find a way
in which (his/her) conscious personality
and (his/her) Shadow can live together.”
The work of integrity
is the work of wholeness/completion/oneness,
wherein the conscious Ego,
external personality,
is an extension and expression
of the inner unconscious/psychic personality.
The mask mirrors–
it does not conceal–
the inner reality,
but makes it palpable in ways appropriate
to the time and place of our living.
Our life has to fit who we are.
Our life is to who we are
as the channel is to the river.
When our life blocks the flow
of the river,
symptoms pour out and over
and flood our world.

When we are in the grip of purest agony,
the tendency is to escape
any way we can.
The best strategy is to bear it out.
We generate agony
when we run from agony.
Our word “agony”
is from the Greek “agone.”
It’s the word Paul used in his,
“I have completed the agone,
I have kept the faith.”
Completing the agone
is bearing the pain of our life,
the pain of being alive.
Wynton Marsalis said,
“My great-great grandmother used to say,
‘Life has a board for every behind,’
and it is just to fit yours,
so that your board
isn’t going to work on someone else’s behind.
And when it’s your turn,
that paddle is going to be put on your booty
and it’s going to hurt as much as it can hurt.”
The agone is part of everyone’s life,
and we we refuse to bear it,
we spread it around,
so that our agone is borne by our spouse
and our children,
and the people in our family of origin,
and the people we work with.
But they have their own board,
their agone,
and if we dump ours on them,
we increase the likelihood that
they will run from theirs,
and the amount of agone in the world
increases exponentially in a short period of time.
Instead of bearing our own agone,
we have been creating agone
throughout history.
It is a reversible trend
that we can turn around
simply by “keeping the faith”–
by keeping good faith with one another,
and bearing our own agone.
When life takes the paddle to us,
we don’t run.
We welcome it
and bear it out,
growing up some more again.

We have to work it all out for ourselves.
WE have to make it work.
And there is no common agreement
as to the meaning of “work.”
What works for some
doesn’t work for many.
What works for one or two
doesn’t work for any.
What works today
won’t work tomorrow.
What works is a very subjective thing.
And quite unreliable over time.
So, from the start,
we are up against it,
with no firm footing
or precise, dependable, bearings.
It is a new world every day.
Every hour.
Who can be confident of anything?
Who can trust anyone?
Yet, we have no choice.
Everything depends upon
our pretending that
everything is dependable.

We do that with an eye
on all of it.
Knowing that we might
have to start over
any time.
The fires in California,
the hurricane in Puerto Rico,
the shooting in Las Vegas
and Sandy Hook,
and Charleston…
Who would have thought it?
Policemen shooting black men for sport?
Who would have thought it?
The world has no moorings.
Nothing is as we have been told it is.
What can we count on?
We can count on having to work it out for ourselves
again and again.
On having to make it work again and again.
On having to find our ground and center,
and start from there again and again.
We are all we can count on.
Our own courage, resiliency, determination,
imagination, creativity, compassion,
sense of direction and vision of what is right
buoy us up
and carry us along.
We better have an unshakeable relationship
with ourselves,
faith in ourselves,
trust in ourselves,
because it is going to be up to us
to find what we need
to see us through–
to find others like us
to hold one another up
and be what each other needs
all along the way.
Community starts with being
the kind of person
community is all about.
Who can we trust?
Who can trust us?
It starts there.

Our personal sovereignty
is the ground of our being–
and has to be recognized as such,
and guarded accordingly.
We say what is right for us
and what is wrong.
We say were we start
and someone/anyone else starts.
We say what our business is
and isn’t.
Where our boundaries lie,
and don’t.
No one can tell me where to stand
when I take a picture.
There are countless decisions
and choices
that are ours alone to make
regarding the experience
and expression
of ourselves.
People who want to “help” us
by taking over our sovereign duty
of deciding for ourselves
who and how we will be
are offering the kind of help
“that we all could do without.”
People who “know what’s best,”
are the kind of people
who have no idea of what
“helping is all about.”
Our body knows who they are.
We only need to listen
to what our body is saying
to know whom to avoid
and where to draw hard lines.

We cannot think–and live–
in terms of
advantage,
acquisition,
achievement,
..
We have to think–and live–
in terms of
experiencing
and expressing
what is deepest,
truest,
and best about us–
the values,
principles
and characteristics
that are the ground
of our being
and the foundation
of who we are
and what we are about,
in each situation as it arises
all our life long
regardless of
the implications
or the outcome,
no matter what.
Boy, that would change the world.

Good religion begins
with knowing what we know
but cannot say.
It has nothing to do
with believing what someone else says.
What someone else says
connects with what we know
or not.
If not, we keep looking
for those who know what we know.
Artists and musicians and poets
and auto mechanics and jockeys
and astrophysicists and kindergarten teachers

talk the same language.
They share the same “religion.”
And, on a larger scale,
they all share the same religion
if they can get past theology and doctrine
to talk about what they know.
White supremacists, for instance,
and Nazis and Fascists, etc.
have to deny what they know
to talk about what they believe–
about what they believe they know.
People who know what they know,
can set aside what they know
to listen to someone else talk about
what they know
until something strikes a cord
and they all begin to resonate
with the music of the spheres.
People who are stuck in some ideology–
any ideology–
cannot do that.
Knowing exists on a level
beyond thinking and believing.
Good religion is based on
knowing what we know
without knowing how we know it,
or how to talk about it.
It’s like music.
All music is good religion.
All good religion is music.
That is all we need to know.

Mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental
awareness
is the basic requirement
for living attuned
to the time and place
of our living–
as a full participant
in what is happening
and a servant
of what needs to happen–
conscious of
the just-so-ness,
the just-as-it-is-ness,
of the wholness
of the situation,
and of the ought-to-be-ness,
the needs-to-be-done-ness,
that calls us to act
in the field of action
as a champion
of the good of the whole
and of the parts
making up the whole,
all things considered.
This is all
that could be asked
of any of us,
ever–
and it is asked
of every one of us

Carl Jung said:
“At bottom, there is only one striving,
namely, the striving after your own being.”
Who am I?
What am I to be about?
What would I be doing
to not be wasting my time here?
How shall I live my life
to experience and express
my gifts/talents/interests/enthusiasms/etc.?
How might I live
to be more aligned
with who I am
and less shackled to
who I am not?
Why doesn’t everyone around us
from birth throughout our life
understand that these
are the questions
we all are born to answer–
and assist us in asking
and answering
them?

11/03/2017 — The Republicans’ agenda
is to appease their Super Pac donors
with large tax reductions
as a return on their investment
of funding Republican campaigns.
The environment,
infrastructure,
health care
and the welfare of the commonwealth
are not their concern.
Republicans will defend gun rights,
work to end abortion,
reverse civil rights gains,
erase LGBTQ rights,
and make white Christian religious freedom
the Law of the Land.
And that is all you can ever expect
of Republicans.
If there is lead in your water,
and if you can’t breathe the air,
and if your children are being taught
conspiracy theories instead of
history and science,
that’s your problem.
You have your guns and Jeezus,
and at least the Democrats
aren’t in control.
So be thankful it isn’t
as bad as it could be,
and don’t complain.

11/04/2017 — We are not going to argue even fringe Republicans
into being Democrats–
or even into voting for a Democrat just once
to see if their convictions are well founded.
Republicans are terrified of Democrats,
or despise them,–
or both.
Democrats will force their daughters
to have abortions,
and turn their sons into homosexuals.
Democrats will take their guns away,
and make reading the Bible illegal.
Democrats will require everyone to say
“Happy Holidays,”
and raise their taxes
to support lazy, stupid, free-riders,
and open the nation’s doors to
terrorists and other foreigners.
And that is just the beginning!
Democrats are straight from Satan,
and are capable of the worst
blasphemy and heresy imaginable–
and even worse things beyond imagining!
All of which is patently absurd,
but.
Just walk into a room full of people
who feel that way–
and 38% of eligible voters feel that way–
and try to talk any of them
out of their assurances about Democrats.
You have those two famous chances,
Fat and Slim.
It doesn’t matter what you say,
or how you say it.
Facts bounce off of them,
and logic and reason
make no impact.
That leaves us talking to people
who are not Republicans
about the future they want to live in,
and hope they will turn out to vote.
Because 38% of the people voting
are going to vote Republican.
And there is nothing you can do about it.
Out-voting Republicans is the only way
to deal with them.

You come alive
in the presence of some things,
and shrivel and die
in the company of others.
Go where the life is,
and spend as much
of the time left for living
with the things that bring
you to life
as you possibly can.
Without pausing
to defend,
explain,
justify
or excuse
what you are doing.
Why do you care
what people think,
if what they think
kills your soul?

11/04/2017 — Living in good faith
with ourselves
and one another
is the foundation of community
and the hope of the world.
Good faith comes down to
being who we say we are
and doing what we say we will do.
No duplicity.
No hidden agendas.
No pretense.
No games.
Everything on the table
and out in the open.
It doesn’t mean we don’t
have sides of ourselves
that no one sees.
It means we are open
about having sides of ourselves
that no one sees–
and it means that we
do not have sides of ourselves
that we do not see.
Self-transparency is the ground
of life with ourselves
and with one another.
Kidding, fooling, lying to
ourselves is the ultimate form
of deception
and the bane of society.

11/04/2017 — One of the core assumptions
of dream work/interpretation
is that each night’s dreams
are metaphors/snapshots
depicting how things are with us
in our life at the present time.
It takes sitting with the dream
to make the connections,
and that is as valid a form
of meditation/prayer
as any of the others
in the history of religion.
If you don’t dream,
or do not remember your dreams,
you can achieve the same
insight/realization
by putting yourself in a daytime
fantasy and watch the action.
For instance, you are in a stage coach
in the old west…
put yourself there,
see what happens
without trying to direct–
just watch…
allow the fantasy to play itself out
and ask yourself
what that has to do
with the way things are in your life.

You have to believe in you
and in the work that is yours to do,
which is not the same
as the work you do to pay the bills
to do what is yours to do.
Your work won’t seem to be much.
It isn’t likely to convince you of its value.
You will have to “take it on faith”
that it is really your work
and worth your time and effort.
It won’t be obvious.
It will be like “a root out of dry ground”
with nothing to commend it
beyond making your little heart sing
until you shame yourself for liking
something so obviously devoid
of importance and prestige.
You have to make your work
the center point of your life
in spite of the catcalls and eye rolls,
and give yourself to it
as though it is a pearl of great price
or a treasure of lasting worth–
because it is,
to you–
and trust that everything
will fall into place around that
regardless of the lack of sustaining evidence.
You have to believe in you
and in the work that is yours to do.
Everything depends on it.

11/06/2017 — A Walk in the Woods Fall 2017 05/06 Panorama — Indian Land, South Carolina, November 5, 2017

Living aligned with our life is the work of our life.
We cultivate alignment by:
Listening to our dreams,
Listening to our body,
Listening to our heart, and
Practicing the art of
mindful/compassionate/non-judgmental awareness
throughout the time left for living.

11/06/2017 — Republicans think Russians
are to be preferred
over Democrats.
Russians hate gay people,
poor people,
people of color,
feminists,
abortions,
and civil rights
of all shapes and sizes.
Republicans think Russians
are just like them.
And they may be right.
I do not know what to say
to Republicans
to change their mind
about anything.
I don’t think it is possible.
The same thing goes for Russians.
I wonder where Republicans
part ways with Russians.
I wish a Republican
would make that clear.
But, it is clear they think
Democrats are the worst people
in the world.

11/06/2017 — I’m having difficulty
coming up with areas
of common agreements
between Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans get elected
on not being a Democrat,
and don’t stand for any
policies impacting social programs,
infrastructure
or the environment.
They talk about small government
and tax reductions
for the wealthiest among us,
and are against
civil rights,
voting rights,
LGBTQ rights,
women’s rights
immigrant rights,
human rights…
Where would the conversation begin?
George Lakoff says
Democrats and Republicans
separate regarding how they
answer the question,
“If your baby cries during the night,
what do you do?”
If we can’t agree about that,
I don’t see a livable minimum wage
having a chance.

11/06/2017 — Freedom requires a significant degree
of latitude, leeway,
room in which to move around.
We cannot talk about “freedom”
in an atmosphere
in which people are bound
together in a narrow little range
of options and opportunities.
I have to be able to live my life
in ways that I deem to be fit and proper
as long as I don’t encroach
on your ability to live your life,
and vice versa.
Your business is yours
and my business is mine,
and the Rule of Law
makes it possible for each/all of us
to live our lives without crashing
into one another.
It is a good system,
and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights
is very clear about the things
each of us can count on from the rest of us.
The Trump Administration
and Republican Members of Congress,
are ignoring the Constitution
and creating a crisis wherein
voting rights are being squashed,
civil rights are being erased,
rights of women and minorities are being denied,
and the Rule of Law is being ignored.
And there is none to call FAULT
and institute penalties.
And freedom is becoming
a wealthy person’s privilege
and not an inalienable right of all.

11/06/2017 — Trump seems to relish
inflicting misery and suffering
on people just because he can.
He isn’t motivated by,
“Whom can I help today?”
Hurting people is his forte.
2,500 Nicaraguans
who have been here
since 1998,
when Hurricane Mitch
demolished much of Central America,
have 14 months to leave the US.
And go where, Trump doesn’t care.
Trump.
Doesn’t.
Care.
And he’s proud of it.
Ask and he will tell you–
he does a better job at not caring
than anyone who didn’t care
ever did.
And, that would be one time
he told the truth.

Embrace your contradictions.
Bear the pain.
Live knowingly–
mindfully,
compassionately,
non-judgmentally
aware
of the all-ness,
the just-as-it-is-ness,
the just-so-ness
of each situation
as it arises.
Strive for harmony
with all things.
Negotiation and compromise, Kid,
negotiation and compromise.
Be at peace
with the way things are
in the sense
that “this calls for that,”
and because things are like this,
you have to respond like this–
if you spill the milk,
clean it up
without being overwrought about it–
“This Means That,”
that’s all–
if the baby’s diaper needs changing,
change the diaper.
Know what you know,
and what you do not know.
Don’t kid yourself.
Don’t strive to impose
your idea of how things ought to be
on things as they are,
but when a door opens,
walk through.
See what you can
get by with
in the service of
your idea of what is good for you
and for the situation as a whole.
Take no for an answer
when that is what is called for.
Do not take no for an answer
when that is what is called for.
Know what is called for
and serve it with your life.
Ask the questions
that need to be asked.
Say the things
that cry out to be said.
Do the things
that must be done.
And let the outcome
be the outcome.
Love what you love
and let things settle out
around that.
If you can find better advice,
take it.

11/08/2017 — Knowing we can do it
is a lot better than
thinking we can do it,
believing we can do it,
or hoping we can do it.
DOING IT is empowering,
emboldening,
grounding,
convincing,
transforming…
Let’s get it done in Alabama!
Doug Jones needs our help.
Cash encouragement
is always helpful.
Explore the Resistance Movement
to see how else you might be helpful–
the opportunities are abundant,
the need is great.
Find a place to fit into
the work that has to be done.
Put bigotry in its place–
a shameful memory
in the annals of time.

Principles,
character
and human values
remain
long after
money,
fame,
and celebrity status
have disappeared
and been forgotten.
Who are you?
What do you stand for?
Whose are you?
What owns you?
What of you will remain
when you are dead and gone?
That is the kind of immortality
that makes a difference–
for better or worse.
Live to make the right kind
of difference,
even after you are dead and gone.
The only thing money is good for
is what you do with it–
how you use it
to change things for the better
in the lives of others.
The trick is to spend your money
and your life
doing the things that matter most.
It is never too late
to begin living well.
The past is inertia
exerting its influence
on the present.
The future is calling
for vision and creativity
in the service
of principles,
character,
and values–
beginning now.

11/08/2017 — People will vote for people
who are doing right
by the people–
not just the wealthy people
or the radical, fundamental, evangelical religious fringe people,
but WE, the people of the United States
who come together again and again over time
“in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice,
insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense,
promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty t
o ourselves and our Posterity,
do (re)ordain and (re)establish
(the) Constitution for the United States of America.”
The people will vote for the people
who are doing that in good faith,
from the heart,
serving liberty and justice for all.

11/08/2017 — Our common agreements have to deal with
who is in charge of a woman’s body,
and a woman’s and a man’s
sexual orientation
and gender identification,
and religious choice and expression.
If I am a woman
and someone tells me
I cannot wear a hijab,
I have to be clear
about how they
came to have authority
over my life,
and where they think
they stop and I start,
and what makes them think
they know more about my business
than I do,
and why they think
that what they think
matters more than what I think,
and who are they
to invade my life?
Our common agreements have to include
where the lines lie
and who gets to draw them.

11/08/2017 — The false aura around
the myth of southern honor
and Old South Heritage
has to be challenged and exposed
for the lie it is
for as long as the lie is cherished and revered.
There is nothing honorable
about chains and whips and lynching’s.
A heritage of white sheets and cross burnings
is shameful to the core.
Racial hatred, violence, intolerance and bigotry
are not things that need to be brought forward
into every present eternally always and forever,
but are things that need to be relegated
to the increasingly distant past
as lessons learned
which are never to be repeated–
and not kept alive in anyone’s heart
as some twisted and evil ideal
which will one day rise again.

We think life is automatic
and under our control.
We say things like,
“It’s MY life and I can do
whatever I want with it!”
And use phrases like
“The master of my destiny,”
and
“The Captain of my ship.”
And we set about to
conquer, conquest, vanquish,
achieve, acquire, amass
to our little heart’s content.
But our little heart isn’t contented
at all,
ever,
by any of it.
And we think if we had only made more money
owned more stuff
(“The one with the most stuff wins, you know),
achieved greater fame and glory,
we would be happy beyond euphoria forever.
Sometimes, it occurs to us
that we were wrong about it all.
That realization could be the turning point.
To often, it is the threshold to despair and dismay.
The Spanish/Latinos among us
have a saying,
“Aqui estamos. Y ahora que?”
(“Here we are. And now what?”)
Everything yet to be
hinges entirely on what we do NOW.
Never mind what we have done
or failed to do,
or what has been done to us,
or was not done for us–
“Aqui estamos. Y ahora que?”
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Examine our assumptions!
See what we thought was so
that is not so.
Start over with our seeing and doing.
Life is not automatic.
We are not in charge.
See what we look at!
Hear what is being said to us
on all levels,
inner and outer.
Know what we know
and what we do not know,
and what is happening
in each situation as it arises,
and decide what to do about it
with the gifts that are ours,
all things considered.
And see where it goes.

Thinking is great for some things, but.
We cannot begin to think our way
into the life that is life for us.
We cannot think our way
through complex choices
where we don’t have enough information
to know what needs to be known.
We cannot think our way through adolescence–
whether we are the adolescent
or the parent of the adolescent.
When thinking goes in circles
and comes up blank
it is time to sit and listen.
Listening is the solution
to all of our problems.
Listen to your body.
Listen to your heart.
Listen to your dreams.
Listen to the stillness.
To the silence.
To the sea.
If you cannot get to the sea,
Google “sound of the sea,”
and listen to that.
Listen yourself into knowing what to do.
If you do it and explodes in your face,
listen yourself into knowing what to do then.
Believe in listening
even when it doesn’t appear to be helping.
Listening was helping
long before thinking came along.

You have to bear the pain,
the agony,
the agone
of life, living, being alive.
You are the Buddha under the Bo Tree,
Jesus in the wilderness
and in Gethsemane
and on the cross.
You are Ulysses on his raft
and Rosa Parks in the front of the bus.
And you have to do it like they did it.
It is the foundational work of being human.
You cannot do the work
without being grounded upon the foundation
of YOU.
It is you alone with YOU
in the pain/agony/agone of life.
You wake up and it is all gone–
all of the answers,
the solutions,
the cliches and the platitudes,
the truisms and the banlities
(“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”
“God doesn’t give us anymore than we can stand!”)–
even God goes,
and there is nothing there but YOU,
and you have to find what holds you up,
what sustains you,
in the aftermath of the complete loss of everything
you thought was sound, dependable and trustworthy.
Where/what is your ground,
your foundation?
When there is nothing but absurdity and nonsense
everywhere you look,
and nothing stands to reason or makes sense,
what keeps you going?
If I ask you that, there,
I’ll be looking for the glint in your eye,
and the beginnings of a smile
at the corners of your mouth,
and a chuckle welling up from the depths,
evidencing the recognition
that you do not go because of any thing.
You just go,
and nothing can stop you.
You are grounded in YOU.
And “when the heaving sea
has shaken your raft to pieces,
then you will SWIM!”
And we will laugh at the very idea
of needing a raft,
when all along we could SWIM!

11/10/2017 — Notice what about you
you dismiss, discount, despise.
What about you
do you ignore, reject,
treat with contempt,
scorn and derision?
Consider it in light of
the Biblical observation
that “nothing good comes from Nazareth,”
and that “the stone the builders cast off
becomes the chief cornerstone.”
Look closely at what you are throwing away,
and reconsider
what you are doing.

We push to hard
to have what we want
the way we want it
NOW!
Nature takes its own sweet time,
waiting for things to fall into place
when the time is right.
My father used to ask me,
“When are you ever
going to grow up?”
back when I was 14, 15, 16, 17…
As though he were grow up.
I’m still waiting to grow up.
One of my most grown-up things
is accepting that I will never be
all grown up,
but always growing up.
Letting the work be never done,
yet always doing the work
is a twist on Sisyphus rolling the rock.
Look your life over
and you will find plenty of places
where the work that needs doing
will never be done
and will always need doing.

The.
Work!
Democracy is like that.
We can’t elect the perfect President,
(much less the Worst President Imaginable)
and think we can exit politics
because the politicians
will now do their jobs
the way they ought to be done,
and we can devote ourselves
to living our own life.
Vigilance and a shoulder to the load
are always required.
Things are never as we want them to be
for long.
There is always work to be done.
Even in Nature,
the time is right momentarily,
and then it is wrong for ages,
and the dance goes on.

11/11/2017 — How many people do you know–
have you known–
who are content to be
who they are–
who are happy to be
who they are–
who are eager to be
who they are–
in each situation as it arises
all their life long,
and look forward to the next situation arising
because it will bring them forth
to meet themselves
in ways they cannot imagine,
and they will discover again and again
who they also are
in the simple act
of being themselves?

11/11/2017 — Trump has never acknowledged a fact
that is different from the way
he wants things to be.
His reality is HIS reality
imposed upon the world around him.
He lives as though HIS world
is THE world in a
“This isn’t how I SEE things–
this is the way things ARE!”
kind of way.
This is a problem
for everyone but him.
All of his problems
are someone else’s fault,
and are not connected to him
in any way.

11/11/2017 — I have to work my side of the street
and you have to work yours.
I’m not here to work your side.
You aren’t here to work my side.
I don’t tell you how to do your work.
You don’t tell me how to do mine.
We live to know our work and do it.
Everything depends upon,
and flows from,
our good-faith relationship with our work.
If we do not know what our work is,
we interfere with everyone else’s.
The world as we know it
exists as it is
because too many people
do not know what their work is.

11/11/2017 — The older I get,
the less time and energy I have
for things that are Not Me.
The fewer diversions/distractions the better.
If it is none of my business,
I stand aside.

11/11/2017 — Our life will be aligned with something.
Let’s break down the possibilities
to our own personal good
and the good of that which is greater than we are.
This could be thought of as the “I” and the “Thou.”
Do we live to serve ourselves,
or that which we think of as “Thou”?
(Those whose good we do not serve at all
might be thought of as the “Them.”
Do we live as an enemy of the “Them,”
merely oblivious to “Them”?
How do we treat “Them”?)
Whose good is served by the good we call good?
How deep is our dedication to its service?
How would people know of our service
by looking at our life?
Whose good would a disinterested observer
say our life is aligned with?
The point here is to be mindfully/consciously aware
of the good we call good,
evaluate its value in light of all we know of “the good,”
and live deliberately with determination and dedication
aligned with its service
in all that we do
throughout the time left for living.

Meet everything that comes your way–
success and failure,
joy and despair,
satisfaction and disappointment,
gladness and heartbreak,
and all things better and worse–
with a quality of mindfulness
that receives whatever it is
and holds it in awareness.
Then wait,
watching and listening,
for the response
that is fitting to the occasion
to arise spontaneously
and express itself
through you
in the field of action.

Our life is always asking something of us,
something difficult,
which requires us to grow up
some more,

If we do not answer the question,
we suffer forever for the failure
of nerve,
of resolve,
to meet meet the question head-on
with the best we have to offer.
The life we live
is our string of answers
to the questions life asked of us
all our life long.
The questions we do not answer
keep coming back.
As we keep refusing to answer them
our life becomes increasingly shallow
and uninteresting,
and we become increasingly
a cardboard cutout
going through the motions of living
without being alive.
Life requires us to feel what must be felt,
to see what must be seen,
to hear what must be heard,
to know what must be known,
to do what must be done
and to be who we must be
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
No running, hiding, denying, escaping!
No distractions, diversions, dismissing, discounting, discarding
what the moment is asking of us.
Always standing up,
squaring up,
stepping forward,
and dancing with
the challenges,
the ordeals,
the trials
that each day brings.
In the spirit of those
who can’t wait to see
how they will handle this test,
eager to discover
what this new obstacle
will bring forth from us
that we did not know
we were capable of producing.

One of the early lessons in photography and life is this:
“One time is NOT as good as another.”
Photographers wait for the right time,
and train themselves to know it when they see it.
People with cameras
(and iPhone cameras are better in a lot of ways
than anything Ansel Adams, et al, worked with)
click their way through the day without evaluating
any scene in terms of its “wall worthiness,”
and are imminently happy with every one.
Photographers evaluate everything about each scene,
and are never happy with every one of their images.
“One time is NOT as good as another”
should carry over into the way photographers live their life.
So that they evaluate every occasion,
each situation,
in terms of what is right for each time and place,
and what is wrong.
All moments are not equal.
Some situations call for this, now,
while other situations call for that, then.
The trick is to live in each situation
in ways appropriate to the time and place of our living,
and to wait, wait, wait
for what we have to say,
or what we want to do,
to fit the needs of the moment,
and its ability to benefit
from what we have to offer

Rapport and resonance are guides
to life,
through life.
What “strikes a cord,”
“rings a bell,”
“catches your eye”?
What doesn’t?
Knowing the difference,
and going with what does–
even without
being able
to explain, justify, excuse, defend
your choices–
will make all the difference.
As will overriding
your “Yes’s” and No’s”
in favor of some completely
reasonable, logical and advantageous path.
There is more to everything
than meets the eye.
Learn to trust your sense
of things unseen,

We ground ourselves in our own values,
principles and character,
and go forth to meet the world.
We do there what needs to be done
in each situation as it arises,
in light of all things considered–
regardless of the implications
that might have for us personally.
We act out of who we are–
not to gain an advantage
or serve our interests,
but to express,
exhibit,
incarnate,
and bring forth
the best we have to offer
and the gifts we have to give
for the good of the whole,
including the least important
members of the commonwealth–
whether anyone joins us,
or even notices,
and regardless of how much good it does
or how much of a difference it makes,
because that is who we are
and what we do.

We have to know what does it for us
and do it.
We have to know what our business is
and tend it.
We have to know what the commonwealth requires of us
and serve it
(Think of the commonwealth as “the good of the whole,”
“the welfare of each other–
with no one excluded because of who they are”–
the larger community of which we are a part).
We have to honor the “I” and the “We” and the “All,”
and know where the lines lie between/among us
and respect them.
We have to know when our business
is going over into someone else’s,
and when theirs is spilling into ours–
and maintain the boundaries.
We have to know what is ours to do,
and do it,
even when it doesn’t do it for us.

11/15/2017 — The enemies of Democracy
are running the country.
“What a fine kettle of fish this is.”
It gets worse.
They are working to take away
our ability to vote,
and packing the court system
with judges loyal to their agenda.
If we were a Banana Republic
their conspiracy would be called
a bloodless coup.
We ARE a Banana Republic!
Wake up!
And Resist!
Vote while you can!
Make noise any way you can!
Do not go submissively into that Dark Night!

11/15/2017 — All of the people who voted
for Donald J. Trump
console themselves with
“At least he isn’t Hillary!”
They will take that with them
to their death.
The rest of us will take THAT
with us to our death.
How can so many be so duped?
It would be fascinating to explore
that aspect of human nature
if it weren’t so deadly for us all.
We can be fooled
by that which kills us,
and can talk ourselves
into anything.

11/15/2017 — If the GOP has no margin to lose
the coming Tax Hike/Health Care Destruction Bill,
we have to turn two votes to NO!
You know the ritual:
Phone Calls
Emails
Post Cards
Letters
to the Republican MOC most likely to be Human:
Collins
Murkowski
Corker
Flake
McCain
and anybody else you think might have a heart.

Our values (principles, character)
inform, direct, guide, shape, form, produce, birth, determine
our life.
If you are going to be clear
about anything,
be clear about what matters most
and allow it to matter most to you.
Our life is the search
for what matters most.
THAT is the Hero’s Journey,
the Spiritual Quest,
the driving force
propelling us into the Field of Action
insatiably starving
for what-we-do-not-know.
What matters most?
We have to find it–
and be right about it–
and serve it as our Liege Lord
throughout the time left for living.
It helps to know
that we do not know–
and have to know–
what it is.
Here is a hint for you:
Do not take anyone’s word for it.
You have to discover/find it
for yourself.
On your own.
And know it because YOU know it,
and not because someone
handed it to you
and told you to take it on faith.

When the door opens, walk through.
Live to know what “the door” is,
and what “open” is,
and what “shut” is,
and what “making something happen” is,
and what “forcing something to happen” is,
and what “allowing something to happen” is,
and what “waiting for something to happen” is,
and what “willing something into existence” is,
and what “wanting what you have no business having,” is,
and what “needs to happen” is,
and what “needs me to do it” is,
and what “needs me to do it whether I want to or not” is,
and what “I have to do this–I have no choice in the matter” is,
and what the difference between the moved and the mover is,
and act in each situation as it arises,
out of what you know.

It’s hard.
It was hard for the Buddha.
It was hard for the Christ.
It was hard for their disciples.
There has never been anyone
for whom it wasn’t hard–
for whom it won’t be hard.
And it is,
and will be,
hard for us.
That is the first–
and most often repeated–
lesson of life.
If we can come to terms with that
it gets easier,
in the sense that we do not expect
it to be easy,
and are not surprised
and undone
when it becomes hard.
So it’s hard?
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Get up and do the hard stuff,
every day for the rest of your life.
And, enjoy the days
when it isn’t hard at all.

Placing ourselves in accord with the Tao
has a lot in common with learning
to hit a backhand in tennis,
or a forehand,
or a serve.
It’s about putting our socks on
before we put our shoes on–
and putting both on before our slacks.
It is knowing what is called for
in a certain situation.
It is knowing
who, what, when, why, where, how and how often–
and living in light of what we know.
It is knowing what we know
and what we do not know–
and living in ways that take into account
what we know
and do not know.
It is living transparent to ourselves,
with mindful/compassionate/non-judgmental awareness,
and doing what is called for
in ways that are fitting to the circumstances
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
God couldn’t do more.

11/17/2017 — We do not move from the center–
from the bed rock–
from the foundation stone–
the heart and source of life–
the defining realization
of who we are
and what we are about.
‘What I do is me/For that I came,”
said Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Find that and do not drift away from it.
Do not let anybody talk you out of it.
Do not bother to defend, excuse, justify or explain
what matters most.
Live it out
and let others draw their own conclusions.
Do your work
and what they think won’t be a distraction.
Serve your gift
with the reverence
of the moved for the mover.
And let that be that.

An abused person–
man, woman, parent, child–
can assume an identity
not her or his own
in an attempt to please
his or her abuser
and be safe.
We can destroy the village
in order to save it.
Our abuser removes us from
our rightful place
as the Choice-maker
regarding the things that are Us
and Not Us,
and becomes the de facto ruler within
for life–
even long years after disappearing
from our life.
We unconsciously replace our abuser
with surrogates to appease and please,
obey and serve,
after our original abuser has died,
or we have moved away.
This is called “climbing over the fence
and still being in the world.”
What to do to achieve freedom?
Bear the pain of emancipation!
We have to sit with the memories–
perhaps in the presence of a therapist
we can trust–
and meet the abuser as the adult
we now are
with: “NO! YOU AREN’T MAKING ME
DO THAT ANYMORE!”–
every time we are inclined to do “THAT”
(Maybe just dusting the furniture
to make her or him happy with us,
and not to make ourselves happy just for us).
We have to reclaim ourselves,
and do the hard work
of discovering whom we are striving to please,
of knowing what is US and Not Us
at last.

11/18/2017 — Gerard Manley Hopkins said,
“What I do is me/For that I came.”
May we all be as clear about–
and as dedicated to expressing–
who-we-are/what-is-ours-to-do,
so that our being and our doing
is one thing exhibited
as eternal integrity of being/doing
throughout our life!
It is always a struggle,
our work to be and to do as one.
We are forever caught
between the Me and the Not-Me,
torn by desire for who we wish we were
and rejection of who we despise and denounce,
and called to acknowledge the ever present truth
of the Also-Me at work
to deepen, expand, enlarge
our understanding of the Me and the Not-Me
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
Self-transparency is our only tool
in the process of realization/confession/atonement
as we come to terms again and again
with the truth of the disparity/contradiction/polarity
that lives within and seeks expression without,
growing up some more once more
forever seeking the oneness
that calls and eludes us throughout our life.

My “thing” is to see what I look at,
say what I see
and how I see it,
which changes what I see
and the beat goes on
and on.
The struggle/work to articulate
what we see
changes what we see.
The more we say,
the more we see,
and the work is never done.
Things “are” what we say they are,
and there is more to everything
than meets the eye,
so we never get it said,
we never get it seen.
We act on inadequate and insufficient information,
draw premature conclusions,
content ourselves
with what we have said
about what we have seen,
neverminding that there is more to everything
than we have seen and said.
It’s a problem
where white supremacists’ relationship
with black people,
and people of color,
and LGBTQ people,
and feminists,

are concerned.
It’s a problem in countless ways,
our dismissing things as “nothing but.”
Our failing/refusing to sit with things
to see what more
we might see and say about them
if we mindfully consider our seeing and saying.
Everything changes when we see it
in its “just so-ness,”
in its “just as-it-is-ness,”
in its relationships with everything else,
including ourselves
and our inferences and projections and history
about/with the thing and things similar.
But.
We don’t have time for it.
The Reader’s Digest Version
is good enough for us.
And we have wars and rumors of wars
because we say what we see
without seeing what we say
and nothing changes ever
because we like it that way.

11/18/2017 — Think of your gifts
and how they form and shape your life.
Think of your life
and how it forms and shapes,
or denounces, denies, dismisses, discounts, ignores,
your gifts.
How do your gifts direct your life?
How do your gifts disappear in your life?
I would like for our gifts to be our life–
for our life to revolve around and serve our gifts.
We tend to think our life is about
disappearing our discomfort, inconvenience and pain,
and increasing our comfort and good times
in a smooth and easy kind of way.
Serving our gifts is too much trouble–
too much outlay and not enough pay back.
Doing something for the sake of doing it well,
with no monetary profit
makes no sense to too many of us.
And I need to talk to all of us about
that very thing–
because our gifts are our salvation,
and we have to start serving them
with complete devotion and fealty.
I’m sailing into a gale
with no chance of making headway,
but my gifts demand it
and I’m having the time of my life.
I’ll be back at it tomorrow!

Beauty dies with us.
We bring beauty–
and pathos–
to life.
Without us,
a rock is just a rock,
and a sunset or sunrise
is nothing to rave about
or worship.
“Us” has to be understood
in its broadest sense
as “more than human,”
because what separates “us”
is entirely uncertain at this point.
Elephants and whales,
apes and chimps,
dogs and deer,

may well have the capacity
for appreciation and wonder–
an affinity for the numinous reality
at the heart of life.
Whoever “we” are,
we keep the light alive
by noticing
and knowing
beauty when we see it,
and creating it,
and sharing it,
and being one with it–
being beautiful ourselves–
and dancing with it
throughout our life,
and being torn by the knowledge
of its passing
and ours.
The pathos of life
is the knowledge of its beauty
and its passing.

Hunting Island State Park has been the site of severe beach erosion for several years. Hurricanes Matthew and Irma contributed significantly to the degree of erosion and wind damage away from the beach–over 5,000 trees have been cut and removed from the inland areas of the park. Cabins, camp sites and restrooms have been destroyed, and the park exists as a testimony to the impact of rising seas and global warming.

11/19/2017 — We elect Members of Congress
to make decisions
that serve the good of the country
as a whole.
Special interests buying their votes
wrecks the foundation of democracy
and makes a mockery
of the patriotic dream.
You cannot design a system
that money cannot subvert–
and that’s the kink in the hose.

11/19/2017 — Everything depends upon
the good-faith participation
of everyone in everything,
across the board,
around the table,
through the ages.
You know, by now,
where that leaves us.

We all are busy in some variation of “our work,”
and we all could do better at what we are doing–
perhaps by not doing it at all
and doing something else,
something more closely aligned
with what Our Work truly is,

But.
It is our call to make all the way:
What our work is,
and what it is not.
The catch is that we have to be right about
what we say is “right for us.”
We cannot just make up something
to save ourselves the trouble
of doing the thing with our name on it,
in season and out of season,
in all times and places and weather conditions,
whether we want to or not,
whether we are in the mood for it or not,
whether we feel like it or not,
for no reason other than because
it is our damn work
and no one can do it the way we can do it
but us.
And.
That means we also have to do the work
of allowing everyone else
to do the work of finding their way to their true work
through a wasteland full of
surrogate, pseudo, faux, fake, facade, charade work
winking at them,
throwing them kisses,
and promising to be better than the real thing
and a lot less actual WORK.
We cannot do their work for them,
and we cannot hand them their work
and tell them to do it.
We have our hands full with our own work,
and they have the responsibility
of figuring out for themselves
what their work is and isn’t.
Some things we have to do all on our own,
one wrong turn,
false start
and dead end
at a time.

Be aware of the discordant forces
at work in a situation,
and hold them in your awareness
while you consciously
put yourself in accord
with the deep harmonies
of goodness and truth.
Ocean waves might
remind you of those rhythms,
or a Buddhist Singing Bowl,
or the AUM at the heart of life.
Practice living within the discordant realities
as one who is in accord
with who and how you are.
Respond to the things that happen
out of the integrity of your own oneness of being
in each situation as it arises.
Be the Buddha under the Bo Tree,
Jesus in Gethsemane,
Rosa Parks in the front of the bus.
Grounded in YOU,
face the world.

There is a saying in the Bible–
the most important saying–
“Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.”
There is another saying in the Bible
of equal importance.
John the Baptist says it of Jesus,
“He must increase
and I must decrease.”
Jesus says the same thing,
in a manner of speaking,
to his disciples,
“You must increase
and I must decrease.”
Saul could not say that about,
or to,

And that is the stone
that stumbles the camel.
Throughout history.
We have Saul in the White House,
who can’t get David,
who just left the White House,
out of his mind,
and the world suffers his madness.
The camel has tripped and fallen.
Again.
And we with it.

11/21/2017 — Those Who Know Best
are in control.
Our only play is to vote them
out of control.
They are laying the ground work
to install a government propaganda machine
and take away our internet access,
sealing us off from each other
and telling us what they
want us to know.
The end of democracy.
The end of Constitutional rights and freedoms.
The beginning of Oligarchy.
Or Autocracy.
Or Anarchy.
All because
Those Who Know Best
do not trust themselves to the People.
We may have the Mid-Terms
to disrupt their plans,
but if they hold the majority in both houses,
their aim is to hold all the cards by 2020,
and we will know how those like us
live in Russia and China, etc.
And a Military Coup may not
be out of the question–
and may be our best hope!
Such interesting times!
Vote while you can–
and not for a Republican!

We have to make compassion and equality
the conscious/intentional/deliberate/constant
driving force/motive/directive/purpose
of our life,
and live in the devotional awareness
of its importance,
and in the regular incarnation/expression/exhibition
of its practice,
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
AND
we have to be diligently, mindfully, aware
of the way hatred and fear
impinge upon our life,
insert their way into our life,
obstruct our way through our life,
and rise up in countless,
subtle,
inconspicuous
ways to corrupt and subvert our devotion
to compassion and equality,
and make it easy for us to reject
the Constitutional standard
of Liberty, Justice, Equality for all,
and live in ways that
are callous and uncaring and hurtful/harmful
to those who are not like us
in any one of the ten thousand ways.
AND we have to override those tendencies
and oppose their encouragement
and expression,
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
Everything rides on it.

Good.
Thing.

11/22/2017 — Republican Members of Congress and Donald Trump
care about those who deserve to be cared about,
and they do not care about those
who do not deserve to be cared about.
They have perpetuated, embraced and believe
the myth of the undeserving poor,
and look at all social assistance programs,
Medicaid in particular,
as entitlement benefits
to slackers, freeloaders and layabouts.
Tax cuts for the wealthy
may also be considered an entitlement benefit,
but the difference is the wealthy deserve it
by virtue of their hard work and undeniable success.
Poor people wouldn’t be poor,
so goes Republican logic,
if they only worked harder at being successful.
Republicans do not care about poor people,
LGBTQ people,
people of color,
feminists,
immigrants,
Latinos,
the elderly,
the sick,
the physically and mentally handicapped…
the list is long,
and their policy of disregarding
the needs of these people
falls more in the category of malicious hostility
than benign neglect.
It is a subtle form of genocide,
and should be understood as such,
and called by name.

Carl Jung said, “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life.”

“The questions of life” are not so much
the questions we ask about life,
but the questions life asks us.
We are the answer–
our life is the answer–
to the questions life asks us:
Who are you?
What are you about?
What are your gifts?
How are you serving them with your life?
What matters most?
Toward what are you living?
In light of what are you living?
What makes your heart sing?
Where is your satisfaction to be found?
What do you pay the bills to do?
What is “you” and “not you”?
How much time in a week
do you spend being “you” doing “you” things,
and how much time do you spend
being “not you” doing “not you” things?
What will you do
with the time left for living?

The poorer the quality of our answers,
the poorer the quality of our life.

Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle (A narrow passage way in the streets of Jerusalem) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

That is, in part, because money becomes God
for the rich people of the world.
Their world is money.
Their motivation is money.
They cannot get enough money.
Once they have money,
they have to have more money,
and then they have to have The Most money.
And they spend it on the most frivolous things
because they don’t know what to do with it
beyond using it to make more of it–
for what purpose, they do not know.
Wealth is a sickness.
Perhaps the greatest sickness.
Consuming all of those who possess it.
It’s the price we pay for getting what we think we want,
instead of giving ourselves to what wants us.
Either way, we lose ourselves,
but in the service of what is the question.
That’s really the only important question,
and the one we live to answer.
We can assume a posture, s
trike a pose,
but our life tells the tale.
Our life does not lie.
“Here,” it says
to us and to all the world.
“This is who you are.”
The only choice we get–
which is reflected/exhibited/incarnated
throughout our life by our life–
is who/what we will serve.

Carl Jung said, “Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.”
And, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”
Put these two statements together
and you get:
The way to wholeness and well-being
is the way of bearing appropriately the pain
that is ours to bear.
No one can bear our pain for us.
We have to shoulder the truth of our life
and what we have done with it,
and failed to do with it,
and step into the next moment,
to do,
or not do,
there what needs to be done–
what needs us to do it–
the way it needs to be done,
in each moment that comes
throughout the time left for living.
How we deal with the pain
of the experience of being alive–
the disappointments,
the failures,
the betrayals,
the abuses,
the griefs,
losses
and sorrows–
determines how well we do
with what is ours to do
in the life that is ours to live.

We have to bear our own pain.
Nothing grows us up like facing our pain
and coming to terms with it.
How we deal with our pain
is the determining factor
in how well we live our life.
What is the nature of your deepest pain?
Remorse/regret?
Shame?
Fear?
Hatred?
What you have done or failed to do?
What has been done to you or failed to be done for you?
The plight of others?
Sit with your pain
and get to know it–
its origin,
its triggers,
its place in your life…
Talk to it.
Interview it.
Be curious about it.
Ask it questions.
Tell it all you have to say to it.
And do it all with mindful awareness,
letting one thing remind you of,
connect you with,
other things,
so that your pain becomes
a doorway to your past, present and future,
opening everything to exploration
and reflection.
Let a Meditation On Pain
become a regular feature of your life.
No more escaping
into your entertainments,
distractions
and addictions!
Square yourself up with your life–
and see what it has to show you,
and what it is asking of you
even now,
even yet.

Only through
Asking,
Seeking and
Knocking.
The search for–
and the service of–
truth
is carried out best
by answering the questions:
What am I interested in?
Where do my interests lie?
What am I enthusiastic about?
What is meaningful about my life?
What has been meaningful about my life?
Where do I find meaning in my life?
And then allowing our interests to lead us
and what is meaningful to be our guide.
We trust ourselves to ourselves,
take no one’s word for what we
are to believe and do,
and decide for ourselves
what matters most,
and honor it in the ways we live.

The fundamental Right
is the Right to Vote.
It is the foundation of all the other rights,
and the cornerstone of Democracy.
All those wars guarded/protected/guaranteed
our Right to Vote!
All those men and women
in every branch of the military
who fought and died
through all the years
of this country’s existence
so that we might be free,
fought and died
that we might be free TO VOTE!
Not free to choose whether to vote or not!
Voting is not an option!
Voting is an obligation!
Voting is a duty incumbent upon every living citizen!
No one gets to pass on election day!
No one gets to “opt out”!
No one gets an excuse!
Voting is not a privilege–it is a requirement of citizenship!
Pass the word–
and vote yourself,
in every election
great and small.
You are creating the future,
not only for yourself,
but also for every person
of every unborn generation.
Democracy depends upon your willingness
to bear the burden
of the responsibility
of Democracy.

11/25/2017 — We have to know where we belong
and what is ours to do–
what our business is
and isn’t.
There is a point at which
we are not our brother’s
or our sister’s
keeper.
Their life is their responsibility
and we cannot force them
do right by themselves,
or by us,
or by anyone.
Carl Jung said,
“It is the individual’s task
to differentiate himself (or herself)
from all the others
and stand on his (her) own feet.”
We cannot make someone else do that.
It is enough
that we make ourselves do it.

11/25/2017 — I know people
who cannot be anywhere
because they always have to be
somewhere else–
who cannot do anything
because they are behind
and have to do something else.
And they medicate themselves
in one,
or more,
of the 10,000 ways
to get through the day.
But.
The next day is just like
the last one.
You can see where this is going.
Nowhere.
In spite of all their going
and doing.
I would like for you to talk to them
for me.
Maybe they will listen to you.

11/25/2017 — Listening,
feeling,
thinking.
That’s the proper order
for the production of well-being
and right relationship
with all things.
We think our way
past feeling
and listening,
thinking thinking is the way to life
in all its splendor and glory.
We need to re-think
the importance of thinking,
and put thinking in its place,
behind feeling
and listening.
Listen to your body.
Listen to your heart.
Listen to your dreams.
And think what to do
about what you hear.

11/25/2017 — People who don’t register to vote,
or register and don’t vote,
are betraying,
not only themselves,
but every person in the country.
Democracy requires the participation
of We The People
in electing the President
and Members of Congress,
and are Constitutionally obligated
to vote for those
we believe will represent fairly
the interests of the good of the whole,
and of the individual parts making up the whole–
and will work in good faith
toward a future that serves,
nurtures and enhances
life on all levels.
To vote is not asking too much
of each of us,
and it is expected of every one of us.
To fail to vote
in every election
great and small,
is reject the fundamental obligation
of citizenship,
and to be a dead weight
holding back the progress
toward realizing the ideals
of Liberty, Justice and Equality for all.

11/25/2017 — I love the new developing tradition
wherein during the holiday season
there are increasing numbers of references
of how sugar and salt are toxic–
that is poisonous–to us all.
Isn’t that great?
We are telling ourselves
that we are killing ourselves.
Maybe eventually we will begin listening
to what is being said.

Too many people refuse to step onto the field of action
because they do not have good enough choices.
They live and die in protest–
one might say “in pouting”–
because the world is not the way
they want the world to be.
“Why is the sky BLUE???
I cannot LIVE under a BLUE SKY!!!”
Suicide is the ultimate protest/pout
about something about the way things are,
but there are 10,000 other ways
of refusing to participate in the world
on the world’s terms.
“Life Eats Life!”
How’s that for obscenity?
We live because something else dies!
That is the basic blasphemy!
The fundamental contradiction/dichotomy/refutation
of every value ever declared to be good!
And the basis of life.
How can sensitive, compassionate, caring people
live in a world where life eats life?
Sensitive, compassionate, caring people
have to bear the weight
of the polarities of existence
just like everyone else.
We all have to square ourselves up
with the way things are
and with the way things also are,
and do what we can imagine doing
in a lifetime that is too short
for anything worthwhile
(another antithesis to all that is good)
to serve the best we are capable of doing
with the options available to us
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.

Are we in and up for it,
or not?

11/26/2017 — A Walk in the Woods Fall 2017 16 Panorama — Indian Land, South Carolina, November 25, 2016

Getting ahead ranks high
as a concern of life
among all of those
who think where they are
isn’t good enough.
Getting ahead wasn’t
an interest of the Buddha,
or the Christ,
and isn’t one for the Dalai Lama.
And nothing the Buddha,
the Christ
and the Dalai Lama
have to offer
would hold any interest
for those intent
on getting ahead.

Carl Jung said,
“One can feel correctly
only when feeling is disturbed
by nothing else.
But nothing disturbs feeling
so much as thinking.”
Feeling puts in touch
with how we are in relation
to people, things, events and circumstances,
and guides our response
to things internal and external.
When thinking/reacting interferes
with our ability to feel our feelings,
we are adrift in a world
calling for action
without knowing what action
is called for.
Thinking our way into acting
without awareness of the deeper wisdom
of our body
prevents us from seeing around corners
and anticipating unexpected outcomes
beyond the purview of articulation and explanation.
“Knowing more than words can say”
is the genius of the feeling function,
which we would do well to nurture,
attend and access
in a regular way.

Hugh MacLeod, in his book on creativity: Ignore Everybody, said:
“Whatever choice you make, the Devil eventually gets his due.
He means there is always a price to be paid.
To get this, you have to give up that.
Or, to get this, you get that as well.
It’s a trade off, Mate,
and you cannot refuse the terms,
because to refuse the terms is to pay a price.
And we want to know where we are better off.
Here’s where:
We are better off coming to terms
with knowing we will never know
where we are better off.
Trying to be too cute
and avoid all of the pitfalls of life,
so that we overthink everything
and rule out anything
that looks as though it might
ask something of us
is one of the great pitfalls of life.
Hiding inside
with the shades down
and the doors locked
keeps us from experiencing the wonder
of “the full catastrophe.”
Embrace the catastrophe!
“Oh, the pain! The pain!”
Bear the pain!
Dance with uncertainty,
contradiction,
anxiety,
fear
and angst!
Don’t know what you are doing!
Take your chances!
Don’t worry about the odds!
Love what you love
and do what is meaningful to you
in each situation as it arises–
even when that means also
doing what you don’t love
and what is not meaningful at all!
Give the Devil his due,
and live the life
that calls you to live it.
And don’t bother wondering
if you might be better off
living some other life.
You would always be better off
somewhere else.
Are you where you need to be
here and now is the question.
Are you doing what is yours to do
as well as it can be done?
We all have the same work:
Finding our life and living it.
And letting the Devil have his due.

11/27/2017 — The Republican Party is a propaganda machine. They control the minds of people, particularly in the south, and have postured Democrats as ghoulish slaves of Evil. Automatic thinking is triggered by “hot” words. That is not thinking.

11/27/2017 — In every winning hand of poker,
or solitaire,
the cards dealt or drawn
had to be arranged in a particular order
instrumental to the play of the hand.
An arrangement implies an arranger,
does it not?
It could not “just happen,” could it?
Aren’t the cards “there” for a reason?
Placed there for YOU–
so that YOU might win?
Who could this Arranger be
who has your good so solidly in mind?
And why does he/she turn on you?
And give you nothing but trash?
It is thinking like this
that is the foundation of all superstition
and all religion.
This is called “The Theology of Poker and Solitaire.”
You could spin it out in the form
of doctrines, dogma and spiritual laws,
and form your own church,
and play cards–
on SUNDAYS!

We are where we are
by way of a combination
of luck, courage and determination.
We haven’t quit–
despite the odds,
regardless of our chances,
here we are.
That’s the Pluck and Luck
required by every Hero
on the Journey.

When you think about quitting,
don’t.
The tide goes out,
the tide comes in.
The time between the tides
can seem like eternity.
Eternity is much longer.
Wait it out.
That’s the solution
to all of our problems today.
Any day.
Every day.
Do what you can
and wait it out.
And, when the door opens,
walk through.

11/28/2017 — Contradiction is the bedrock of reality.
The war of opposites
is a clash of perspectives
in a “now you see it, now you don’t”
kind of way.
The less we see that we don’t see
what we are looking at,
the more we are blindsided
by the sudden unveiling
of how things also are
just when we thought
we had how things are
all sorted out
and neatly arraigned
to our liking.
The clash takes us to the heart of the matter.
And how we accommodate ourselves to it,
deal with it,
tells the tale,
which, in the telling,
disrupts some apparently tranquil scene,
or interjects calm repose
amid the chaos of grief, loss and sorrow.
The disconnect is the connection
between background and foreground,
gestalt and realization.
This has everything to do with that,
and vice versa.
And life is an optical illusion,
dizzying in it’s sudden,
unpredictable,
shifts–
which we keep trying to control
by explaining and understanding,
and explaining some more.
It’s better that we dance,
laughing,
at one with the “full catastrophe,”
and ready for the music to change,
or stop,
without warning,
at any time.

The wonder and privilege of being alive
is grounded on
seeing what is to be seen
and doing what is to be done.
It is solely about the work
that is ours to do,
and the situations and occasions
that are ours to influence.
It is not
as it is so completely, totally and absolutely
thought to be
about achievement, acquirement, accomplishment and success.
We are not here to amass wealth
and do what we want.
We are not here to be entertained
and coddled.
We are here to find our life and live it–
to match our gifts, interests, proclivities and enthusiasms
up with the needs of each situation
as it arises,
and to do there what only we can do
the way only we can do it,
and allow the flow of conditions and circumstances
to carry us along,
being who we are,
doing what is ours to do,
without bothering about maximizing our advantages,
but looking to be of help to others
with the tasks of seeing, doing and being,
and letting our little heart sing,
and our little feet dance,
all our life long.
How long has it been
since you have sung and danced
to your heart’s content?
Why put that off any longer?

Our first order of business
is to ground ourselves
in the values and practices
that we know to be essential
to our life in the world.
Silence, reflection, self-transparency,
listening to my heart, my body and my dreams,
integrity (saying is doing) and compassion,
clear boundaries and mindful awareness
are all things I trust with my life
(And don’t exhaust the list).
These are things I believe in,
have faith in,
without which I cease to exist
as the “I” I know myself to be.
They form the core of my self-concept,
and represent who I am to me.
When my world is rocked
by collisions with forces beyond
prediction or control,
I remind myself of what I know to be true
about myself and my place in the world,
and wait for things to settle out
so that I can access what is happening
and make some preliminary determination
about what needs to be done in response.
Taking the time to sit with a situation
and absorb the experience
of being walloped is instrumental
to all that follows.
How much time depends upon
the severity of the blow
and its shock to my systems
providing balance and direction.
I have been betrayed by my assumptions
and expectations several times,
when my world exploded,
and I’m still dealing with some disappointments.
We do not get over some things,
but “walk with a limp” always
as we go about our business in the new world
of this present reality–
and we have to allow for that,
and let it be because it is.
Things will never be what we want them to be,
but that doesn’t mean
we cannot deal with the way things are
in ways that make the here and now
an acceptably good place to be.
The work to do that requires
us to be grounded in the values and practices
that make it possible.

Landscape photography is a wonderful way
of reminding yourself
how quickly things are changing,
how short the light lasts,
how little time we have
to do the work that is to do,
how fast it all is moving,
how nothing changes even though nothing lasts,
how “a good photograph”
in the beginning of photography
is still a good photograph,
how seeing what you look at
is always the task we never master,
how being where you are
is always the goal never fully realized,
how realization is the heart of the matter
and is always requiring additional
tweaking/revamping/throwing out and starting over,
how being with a duck on the water
helps us be with anything/everything all the time,
how being with things and people matters most
no matter what anybody tells you.

The phrase, “Putting oneself in accord with the Tao,”
is completely meaningless
because we have no idea what “the Tao” is,
and it cannot be defined or explained.
“The Way,” is as close of an approximation
as we can make, but.
“The Way” to what?
Of what?
We cannot say.
We do not know.
Any more than we can say, or know,
anything communicable about
“the way of a snake upon a rock,
or the way of a ship upon the sea,
or the way of a man with a woman.”
We can experience the wonder
of being alive
in all the ways we can be alive,
but we cannot say what that means.
We can talk about knowing with words,
but we know through experience.
And what we know through experience
is the difference between “it”
and “not it.”
Back to the Tao,
which is the ground of human experience.
To be “at one with the Tao”
is to be “with” whatever we are doing
in a way that merges us with the thing we are doing
so that “the dancer becomes the dance,”
and “the singer becomes the song,”
and “the archer becomes the arrow,”
and “the pitcher becomes the ball,”
and we become the life we are living.
Practice that until you can do it without thinking,
so that “the right hand doesn’t know
what the left hand is doing,”
and doesn’t need to know,
because it has its business,
and the left hand has its business,
and sometimes it is the same business
carried out in cooperation and collaboration
without thought or explanation.
When we are in accord with the Tao,
we move as one with our life,
responding to the moment,
to the situation,
in ways that are appropriate
to the occasion
without even noticing what we are doing.
We “eat when hungry, rest when tired,”
and do everything with the elegance
and effortlessness of a bird in flight.

12/02/2017 — Landscape photography is grounded
in knowing the difference between
the right time and the wrong time.
This is also the foundation
of a well-lived life.
“The fullness of time” is the time for action.
When action is called for: ACT!
When it is not: DON’T!
Learn to know the difference
and you have it made.

Grace is the bedrock of everything.
In theological jargon,
grace is “unmerited benevolence.”
But.
Benevolence is a matter of interpretation,
and grace is at work even there,
enabling us to know benevolence
when we see it.
Some people never see it.
It is always “Woe is me, woe is me!”
with them.
The whole thing is unmerited.
We don’t deserve anything we get.
It’s all a gift,
or a curse,
waiting to be designated as such
by someone who thinks they know
which is which.
Which is itself an act of grace–
that we should think we know anything
or “realize” we know nothing.
It’s all grace.
“The way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the sea,
the way of a man with a woman.”
“The way, the truth, the life.”
“The Way.”
“The Tao.”
Everything is the Tao.
Everything is the Way.
Everything is Grace.
“By Grace we are saved!”
“And lost!”
“And found!”
“And live!”
“And die!”
The Grace of Realization,
of Awareness,
of Mindfulness…
Of Justice, Truth, Liberty and Equality…
The Grace of all Values and all Value
lies in the recognition of the wonder of being,
the wonder of all things,
the wonder of being alive…
We wake up to the wonder of Grace
when we wake up to the wonder
of waking up.
It is Grace all the way down.
And up.
And all around.
The timeless grace of being.

12/03/2017 — This Joe Scarborough quote from Sen. Orrin Hatch reflects the core perception of the GOP, and is precisely what we are up against as a country in dealing with the Republican Misconception of Value–they cannot perceive what is truly valuable (or what is truly not):

Joe Scarborough‏Verified account @JoeNBC

.@SenOrrinHatch talking about children’s health care: “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.”
12/03/2017 — The idea that everyone
could be self-sufficient
and self-reliant,
independent, sovereign, autonomous
and fully capable
of taking complete care of themselves
IF THEY ONLY TRIED
is the point of demarcation
between Republicans and Democrats.
“If I can do it, anybody can!”
neatly ignores the fact
that every Republican office-holder
is where they are
thanks to the Donors who pay their way
and keep them in office.
Not one Member of Congress
pays their own way.
And every Republican MOC
thinks they deserve everything they have,
and that they did it all
by themselves.
Misperception keeps them from seeing
what they look at.
Keeps them doing what they are doing:
Serving the wrong values.
Despising the right ones.

We have to atone for our own failures to be
who the situation needed us to be–
for our own refusal to do what needed to be done,
in ways appropriate to the occasion.
And we have to do it in good faith,
with mindful awareness
and complete self-transparency.
A failure/refusal to do so
seals us in a life that is inauthentic
and cut off from its own ground,
bedrock, foundation,
lost in a wasteland
of our own discontent.
To make atonement,
we have only ourselves to appease–
by squarely facing
what we have done
and what we have not done,
refusing to deny, dismiss, discount or ignore
the truth of our disgrace,
but living to redirect our life
toward the goal of being who and doing what
is called for in each situation as it arises
throughout the time we have yet to live.
Tomorrow’s right is grounded in yesterday’s wrong.
And we are here today to see that that is so.

Insight is another word for realization–
both are functions of reflection/connection,
seeing the implications and ramifications
of everything.
Who looks that closely,
listens that well–
to see,
to hear,
what they look at,
listen to?
Who makes the kind of inquiry–
who asks the kind of questions–
that seeing and hearing require
in order for seeing and hearing
to happen?
Those with something to gain
from our seeing and hearing
what they tell us to see and hear
do not want us asking the questions
that seeing and hearing require.
Think about that,
if you will,
and see what you come up with.

Grace, kindness, tenderness, gentleness…
Where do you experience these things in a day?
Where do you exhibit them?
What can you do to increase the length of each list?

12/06/2017 — The term “sheep without a shepherd”
comes to mind
when I think about the people
worldwide
who have no experience with
“a mind of their own.”
Theirs is a tribal mind,
a “we” mind.
They way they do things,
think about things,
is the way “everyone” does things,
thinks about things,
with “everyone” being the people
in their caste/class/circle/tribe–
those who are as they are,
the generic WE to whom they belong.
They do not know “their own mind.”
There are thoughts they do not
allow themselves to think.
Thoughts they will not allow
themselves to acknowledge thinking.
Asking them to vote
means telling them whom to vote for.
Asking them to choose
means telling them what to choose.
Asking them to let their conscience be their guide
means telling them to do what
they know they are supposed to do.
Their shepherds are Those Who Know Best.
The Guardians of the Tribe.
Asking the members of the tribe
to grow up and be who they are,
is beyond their capacity to understand and to do.
They think they are grown up.
They think they are being who they are.
And there we are.

Exploiting a situation to our personal advantage
is what we do best.
Nothing comes along
that we can’t try
to turn to our advantage.
Every day it is the same thing:
What can I do today
to turn things to my advantage?
This isn’t just a Human Thing,
it is a Life Thing.
Every living thing
strives to have things
better than every other living thing–
at the expense of whatever it takes
to have it.
This is the ground of incentive
and desire,
aspiration and motivation.
The Buddhists think there is an advantage
to letting things be.
How does having to have the advantage
get in our way?
Work to our detriment?
What are the disadvantages
to having he advantages?
Where are we truly better off?
Where would we be wise to draw the line?
What is the advantage
to not having the advantage?

12/08/2017 — Black And White — A Photoshop Creation, December 8, 2017

We have to rescue the princess.
This is all the more important
when we realize
we are the princess.
Sex and gender fall into place
around the understanding
that we seek in another
what is only found within.
That which is stirred to life
in the form of the other
is a projection
of what is being ignored within.
WE are the one we seek!
How many “love affairs”–
how many “marriages”–
do we have to go through
in order to comprehend
that all the others
are lacking the key ingredient
that only we can supply?
All of our affairs and marriages
are calling us to grow up
and be who we are,
and do what is ours to do–
what we only can do
the way only we can do it.
We have two feet–
we have to stand on them.
We have to find our foundation–
the bedrock of our heart and soul–
what we know to be so
because we know it to be so,
and not because someone told us it is so.
We do not need to take anyone’s word
for what we know to be real, and true, and valid, and reliable,
and has the central place of highest value for us–
what our life has shown us to be
the face that was ours before we were born–
who we are and who we are called to be
In Carl Jung’s summation:
“We are who we always have been–
and who we will be.”
And in his revelation:
“There is within each of us,
Another whom we do not know.”
That’s the one we seek in the face
of strangers–
the Princess waiting to be rescued
and wed
as a prelude to happily ever after,
though it be at great price
and require us to walk two paths at the same time,
treading one slippery slope after another,
walking the straight and narrow
along the razor’s edge.
It all comes together under the euphemism
Rescuing The Princess,
though it could be called
Living With Integrity,
or Living In Accord With The Tao,
or Becoming The Christ/The Buddha Within.
It’s the best trick in the entire Book of Tricks,
and requires us to become the master magician,
the sorcerer,
the wizard,
the wise old man/woman
we are
in bringing ourselves forth
and being who we are and also are,
so that the two become one
and we know ourselves to be whole at last.

To live in good faith
is to step into each situation as it arises,
mindfully aware of what is happening there,
transparently real to ourselves
and to the people present with us,
with no ulterior motives or hidden agenda,
seeking only to see/hear/understand
what action being called for
that is appropriate to the occasion,
and responding with the gifts
that are ours to share/serve
for the good of the whole,
to the extent that we are able
to apprehend it.
Good faith is incompatible
with mindlessness,
exploitation,
manipulation,
posturing,
affectation,
deception,
dishonesty,
smoke-screening,
stone-walling,
lying,
and being less than forthright.
Do everything in good faith
and the world will notice it,
and be glad.

Shooting ourselves in the foot is what we do best.
Knowing when we are getting in our own way
is the kind of knowing
that knowing is all about.
How are we setting ourselves up
for more of the same?
How do we live our way into better choices?
How does what we choose
limit our choices
to the choices we always have,
and always make?
How do we recognize a transitional choice
when one comes along?
How many transitional choices
do we get in a lifetime?
How do we stop thinking
about exploiting our options,
and start thinking about making better choices
among the choices available to us?
Which choices require us to grow up?
Which choices keep us comfortably where we are?
What are our favorite ways
of shooting ourselves in the foot?
What do we think about
that keeps us from thinking about
these things?

How free are we to walk into each situation as it arises,
and see what is happening,
and know what needs to happen in response,
and act in light of that knowledge
with the gifts we have to serve/offer
toward the good of the situation as a whole?
How bound are we to imposing our idea
for the situation on the situation?
To force our will for the situation
upon the situation?
To act as Those Who Know Best
in every situation we meet
without regard to the time and place
of our living,
but reacting out of our blind allegiance
to How Things Are Supposed To Be,
with no interest in,
or concern for,
any other thing?

Putting ourselves in accord with the Tao
is putting ourselves in accord with the way things are
is putting ourselves in accord with responding
to the way things are
in ways that are appropriate to the occasion,
to the situation as it arises.
When we spring something on a situation
that is out of harmony with the situation–
that does not belong there–
everything suffers.
The “disruption in the force”
is felt throughout the system.
Do something out of character
at the dinner table–
or anywhere–
and the universe will tilt on its axis,
the poles will reverse,
time will run backwards,
and the dog will leave the room
as people try to adjust themselves
to a situation where things are radically out of order
and not at all what they are supposed to be.
The world loves to hum right along,
or, better perhaps, to AUM right along.
We have to put ourselves in accord with the Tao
of the aging process,
of arthritic knees,
of dimming eyesight…
the list is long
and we have to adjust ourselves
to the way things are now
in one situation after another
all our life long.
When we do that with grace and aplomb,
everybody notices and settles into the rhythm
of their own life,
the dog comes back into the room,
and everything settles quietly into place
around the new beat,
the different key,
as the band plays on.

“Free will” makes no sense
when we are not free to will our choices.
“Do you want to wear the red one or the blue one?”
is not freedom.
All propaganda comes down to:
The red one or the blue one?
And the “choice” is presented in ways
that lean us toward one and away from the other,
as the propagandist boxes us out of
all the other choices available to us,
and deftly keeps us from thinking about
the choices that are not ours to choose.
Religion–bad religion–is great about
forcing choices between red and blue
as though those are our only possible options:
“You don’t want to go to hell, do you?
Well then, if you want to stay out of hell,
Jesus is your only alternative!
Because the Bible says….”
Wait a minute!
Where did the Bible come from?
How did it get into the conversation?
Don’t we have a choice about that?
Not with Bad Religion at the door.
We don’t get to choose whether the Bible
is authoritative for us or not.
We are TOLD the Bible is the only authority,
because, you guessed it,
the Bible says so.
Red or blue?
How about naked?
How about staying home?
How about going as Peter the Pirate?
Or Martha the Mouse?
Who says our choices are limited
to the choices we are asked to make?
You can decide for yourself, but
I’m not choosing
until I get better choices!

12/10/2017 — The Republican fallacy is:
“If everyone worked hard enough,
there would be no need for government assistance.”
This ignores the facts:
A) It is impossible to “work hard enough”
at jobs that do not pay a living wage.
B) Wealthy people make their money
on the strength of government assistance
in the form of tax cuts, deductions, exclusions and considerations.
Republicans think of “government assistance”
as “paying people to not work,”
and cannot see it as “helping people make ends meet.”
No one can meet the expenses
of catastrophic health issues,
or natural disasters,
without the “safety net”
of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security
and related forms of government assistance.
And it is insensitive–
no, insane–
to think otherwise.

12/10/2017 — Republicans believe their own lies.
They are bound to–
and blinded by–
their own ideology.
They are insulated from,
immune to,
and incapable of being impacted by
facts,
reality,
reason,
truth,
actuality.
They are locked into
their own world,
and are convinced
that the way they see things
is the way things are.
The only way to deal with them
is to vote them out of office,
and never elect them to anything
ever again.

“The consolations of nature”
are a steady, constant, on-going, eternal reminder
that “this is the way it is,”
like it or not,
always and forever.
Black holes swallow entire galaxies.
Earthquakes and hurricanes
destroy landscapes and create new ones.
Tomorrow can be radically different from today
just like that.
Life eats life.
There is no mercy,
no immunity,
no escape
from the immutable
“Law of the Fishes–
where the big ones eat the little ones,
and the little ones better hide.”
And, it is our place to let that be,
because it is,
and to do what we can to bring
human grace, compassion and kindness
to life in an otherwise mechanical and graceless environment–
and to relish the beauty of sunsets
and sunrises,
marvel at the wonder of the harmonies
within the chaos,
celebrate the majestic
and ineffable impact
of the cyclic and unpredictable
unfolding of natural forces
from microscopic to cosmic levels.
and to take our place
within the givens of this framework,
with arms open wide to it
and a wholesale affirmation of it,
as those who are one with it,
glad to be/to have been a part of it
in a “This, too. This, too.” kind of way,
allowing that to square us up with the
ebbs and flows of our own life,
as we square ourselves up with the
comings and goings of the whole show.

Greed seems to be the basis of civilization,
but cannot coexist with the self-transparent,
mindful, compassionate, awareness
of human values and how they impact human existence.
Greed requires the willful disregard
of the spin-offs and implications of greed,
and grounds itself upon a combination
of ignorance and naiveté
that allows it to believe it can have all it wants
and everything else will remain exactly as it was forever.
Greed cannot proceed in light of the full impact
of its actions,
so it denies them,
and tells itself it can give itself tax cuts and considerations
that rob the middle and lower classes of their security
and burden them with paying off the national debt
incurred by the actions of greed–
and nothing will happen
beyond the steady accumulation of wealth and power forever.
Denial married to stupidity is a force nothing can withstand–
except the immovable wall of truth/reality.
The bodies, hopes and dreams
at the bottom of that wall
should be an everlasting testimony
to the empty foolishness of greed,
but the force of greed is irrational and all-consuming,
and the powerful are helpless in its grasp.
That is the story of civilization,
past, present and future.
Generations yet to come
may mature beyond the spell of greed,
and live immune to its Siren Song of Glory Beyond Imagining,
but that is little consolation
to those who live with the current level
of maturation of the species,
and deal with the power of greed
in control of their world every day.

12/11/2017 — Denial and escape
via diversion and distraction
are our favorite ways
of dealing with our life.
Putting ourselves in accord
with the Tao–
with how things are–
never enters our mind.
And here we are.

12/12/2017 — Super Moon 2017 02 — Indian Land, South Carolina, December 3, 2017 — If Neil deGrasse Tyson is to be believed, the only difference between a Super Moon and a regular, old, every month moon is too small to be seen. He suggests taking a soda straw and looking at the moon through it when it is an ordinary full moon, and doing the same when it is a Super Moon. That should put aside the conversation about how big it is. Hype creates conviction, politically and astronomically. And too much of what we believe isn’t so.

We can “do our thing”
anywhere,
any time,
anyhow–
for no reason other than
it is our thing
and it is what we are here to do,
so, we are going to do it,
and we are not going to be stopped by
“What good would it do to do it?”
because
“What good would it do to not do it?”
Arise each day and do your thing,
without keeping score.
Just you and your thing,
dancin’ and singin’ in the rain.
Or snow.
Or earthquake, wind, heat, cold, fire, flood and drought.

I see dreams as nighttime revelations
declaring: “This is how it is right now in your life!”
Helping us bring to reflect, bring to consciousness,
and hold in our waking awareness
the realization that we are living the dream,
which works to enable us to
“put ourselves in accord with the Tao”
that is being borne out in our lived experience each day.
The past few nights have seen me
coming up against foes of various origins,
but all being super-villains
and me being, well, me.
I didn’t have a chance in any of the dreams,
and was left as each dream faded
wondering “What can I do about this situation?”
I wake to the world of Donald Trump,
and Roy Moore,
and the Republican Tax Hike Bill
with its inherent Loss of Everything Good
Congress has done over the last 70 years,
and on and on, like that.
Super-villains in control.
I have to come to terms with that
and put myself in accord with it.
I do that by not kidding myself
about the odds,
my chances,
and my prospects–
and not letting that stop me
from doing what I do.
I reflect on the state of things
and I write about it
from the vantage point
of silence and solitude,
grounded in the natural world
and reflected in the photographs I take,
the pursuit of which
casts me into the natural world
which counteracts, offsets, and balances out
the political horrors of the day.
I do what I do because that is who I am and what I do.
Oysters don’t have an impact either,
but that doesn’t stop them
from doing what they do,
in an environment that is as unfriendly as mine is.

Mindfulness leads the way.
Everything flows from, follows, and falls out around
being mindfully, compassionately aware
of everything.
We cannot do that in a hurry,
pressing and rushing to get things done.
We have to take our time,
look around,
sit and listen,
sit and reflect,
make inquiries,
explore inferences and assumptions,
holding it all in our awareness,
waiting to see what we do
until the time for action arises on its own,
with a particular urgency and direction,
taking us with it to destinations unknown,
and courses unplotted,
enfolding us in the mystery
at the heart of life and being,
in the service of what
we do not know,
with a rightness and truth
that cannot be denied
or refused,
sweeping us along in currents
coursing through time,
at one with the rhythms and harmonies
of the spheres.
All because we look until we see,
listen until we hear,
ask until we understand,
knock until it opens
and carries us away
in arms everlasting.

I would like a Do Over
from any point in my life.
I could do better,
and so could you.
I would like to do college over,
and seminary,
with the right attitude.
My life lived with the right attitude
would be something.
So would yours.
It takes living to understand that.
It cannot be told.
We can know what we are told,
and repeat it back,
even word for word.
Understanding at the level
of the marrow of our bones
is beyond instruction.
We have to live our way there.
So the first life needs to be
for the development of understanding,
then we need to go back and do it again,
with understanding,
and, of course, compassion and grace–
which understanding would understand.
That would be something.

We make too much of what happens to us
and what doesn’t.
The context of our life
brings us forth–
birth us, again and again–
in ways and with character
we would never develop
lolling around in our ideal world
with just what we want
coming in on cue,
only with better accoutrements
than we had imagined.
We grow up against our will.
And in our dream world
there is no growing up at all.
So, step away from the woe this
and woe that.
Life will never be the way we like it for long.
That’s the best thing about it.
It’s better than Disney World and Epcot combined.
We never know what is coming
or how long it will last.
The bad is always coming too fast
and lasting too long,
and the good is always coming too slow
and leaving too soon.
How we deal with the coming and going
is the key to all of it.
WE are what our life is about.
It is trying its best to mold us
into who we are capable of being,
and we are whining all the way,
“Not this! Not that!”
Whatever it is,
is the matrix of our living,
the places we become who we are.
And we have more of a say–
and more of a stake–
in our own outcome
than in the conditions and circumstances
that make us the us we turn out to be.
What is being asked of us
in each situation as it arises?
Who and how is it asking us to be?
It doesn’t matter what we like or don’t like.
It matters who we are capable of being
in the mix of the moments
and the mess
we make our way through
each day,
and how well we live in
and deal with,
each one.

12/14/2017 — A Walk in the Woods of Fall 2017 17 — Indian Land, South Carolina, November 26, 2017

Rhythm and harmony disappear
in direct proportion
to the degree in which we try
to force something to happen
or keep something from happening.
If we are living in the flow of the moment,
aware of what is happening
and what doors are opening
and what doors are closed,
we will find ourselves
dancing with the music
and doing what is appropriate
to the occasion–
at the time,
and in the way,
that it needs to be done.
This is called
being at one with the here
and in tune with the now,
or living in accord with the Tao
of time and place.

12/14/2017 — There is nothing more important
or necessary
than sitting down with yourself
and listening
with compassionate mindfulness
to everything yourself has to say,
and to how you react/respond,
noting where this goes,
what it uncovers and asks of you.
Then reflect on this experience
with compassionate mindfulness,
seeing where reflection leads you
and what realizations dawn.
Repeat this process–
this practice–
in a regular and recurring way
throughout the remainder of your life.

12/14/2017 — The concept/idea of enough
begs the question,
“Enough for what?”
There is never enough
because we do not know
“Enough for what?”
Because we are not living
in the service of anything
larger than ourselves,
we live to serve our appetites
and desires.
But we are insatiable
and never satisfied for long.
Always the need for more–
for bigger barns,
and larger houses,
and more cars
and boats
and castles
and kingdoms…
Because we do not know
“for what” we live.
Our education should start
with that question
and we don’t graduate
until we answer it.

Good religion is not good for the economy.
It requires people to take up the practice
of examining who they are
and what they are doing
and getting the two together
so that what they are doing
exhibits, expresses, incarnates, reveals, declares, etc.
who they are–
and that process opens them to,
connects them with,
the Numen,
the inexpressible, ineffable,
source and essence
of life and being.
And the people,
in becoming one with themselves
and one with their actions
become one with
that which has always been called God–
and all is one and one is all,
and integrity shines bright
on all the faces,
and that is all there is to it.

12/15/2017 — Joseph Campbell said
the moral of the Bhagavad Gita
is “Get in there and do your thing,
and don’t worry about the outcome!”
That should be the story of our life.

12/15/2017 — The interplay of opposites
produces the world as we know it,
and all the worlds beyond.
Everything,
from the smallest microorganism
(Mycoplasma genitalium, by my latest reckoning),
to the largest galaxy,
is in the business
of seeing what it can get by with,
in conjunction with everything else
bent on the same task.
All that conflict and competition!
Parasites killing hosts!
Planets colliding!
Parents yelling at children!
Children yelling at parents!
The whole thing is a wonder and a marvel!
I would not consider being anywhere else
under any circumstances!

12/15/2017 — What matters most
is always in plain sight,
overlooked or ignored
by those who walk by unseeing.
The stone the builders reject
is the chief cornerstone.
The pearl of great price
lies in the display case
unnoticed by customers every day.
What was true in Jesus’ day
was true in Moses’ day,
and is still true in our day.
We look but we do not see.
We say, “Here it is! Over here! Over Here!
We found it! We found it!”
But that isn’t it.
We haven’t found it.
We pour our life
into climbing the ladder of success
but it is leaning against the wrong wall.
The Buddha understood,
and Gandhi,
and Rumi,
and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and Helen Keller,
and Harriet Tubman,
and Rosa Parks,
and so many others, but.
Understanding cannot be passed along.
Jesus’ disciples were as blind
as the Scribes and Pharisees.
Seeing cannot be taught.
Hearing cannot be passed out and around.
How do we know?
How do we know that we know?
And that we do not know?
I know that we do not know,
and you know that we do not know,
but how we get ALL of the to know it?
Or anything?
When most of them think they know everything!

12/15/2017 — Life is not possible “within the means”
of too many people–
and Republican MOC
cannot/will not comprehend that fact.
Facts make no impression upon Denial.
Upon Abject, Willful Denial.
Republican MOC are the lowest/worst form of humanity
the current generation of Americans
have ever experienced.
Welcome to life as it is
in Third World countries.
We have become a Third World country
ruled by the oligarchs of the First World.

12/15/2017 — Republican MOC telling poor people
to live within their means
is Marie Antoinette telling people who have no bread
to just eat cake.
When the bread runs out eat cake.
When the money runs out live within your means.
Republican MOC are heartless,
cold, cruel and without a care or concern
for what they are doing
beyond making themselves and their Donors
rich beyond their dreams.

12/15/2017 — Republicans and Democrats
cannot talk to each other.
It’s AM talking to FM.
It’s VHS talking to DVD.
They speak and listen,
but there is no hearing,
no understanding,
no comprehension.
They live in different worlds,
have different values,
and different agendas.
I don’t see this working out
to anyone’s satisfaction.

What we do for a living,
and what we live to do,
are not often the same thing.
Too often, we let
what we do for a living
determine everything else.
It is better to know
what we live to do
and let the rest
fall into place around that.
What we live to do
doesn’t get much attention.
It is as though we think
anything will do
in occupying the time
not spent in doing what we do for a living.

The quality of our life,
the depth of its meaning,
the extent of its joy,
the degree of its vitality,
the nature of its impact,
all depend upon
the realization of its importance
and the devotion of our allegiance
to its service.
It is not something we do
when the mood strikes us,
or nothing else is more inviting.
Dancers dance.
Writers write.
Singers sing.
Gardeners garden.
Artists draw and paint.
Teachers teach.
Thinkers think…
You know, like that.
Beyond wanting to,
in spite of not wanting to.
We are all capable of–
and called to–
live in the grip of something
quite beyond us,
which we do not make up,
and can only accede to and serve–
as partners with the urge to be and to do
all our life long.

12/16/2017 — Charleston Harbor Sunset 2017 11 — Taken from Pitt Street in Mt. Pleasant, December 5, 2017 — I copied and flipped the sky and attached it to the original image to produce the apparent reflection and achieve an abstract sunset of colors I love.

There is us and our life–
the one we are living,
and the one that is ours to live.
Our place is to get us together with our life–
the one that is ours to live–
while living the life we are living.
It’s called
walking two paths at the same time,
and it constitutes the Hero’s Journey.
If you are not consciously,
deliberately,
intentionally,
involved in the work
of getting yourself together
with your life–
the one you are living
and the one that is your to live–
it’s time you get started.

12/16/2017 — Our perspective is our responsibility.
It isn’t our place to argue Republicans
out of their perspective.
It is our place to point out to them
that their perspective is their responsibility,
and they are responsible for
the way they see things–
and for the damage
the way they see things
is doing to the country,
and to the world.
“The way you see things
is your responsibility,
and it impacts everything.
You bear the burden
of the impact of your perspective.”

12/16/2017 — “Round, and round, and round it goes,
and where it stops, nobody knows.”
It doesn’t stop.
Nor does it start.
And “it” can be whatever you want to call it.
“The Tao.”
“Creation” (But that is a misnomer–
nothing is “created” and nothing is “destroyed”).
“Existence.”
“Life.”
“The Way.”
It has been called many things,
but by whatever name,
no start, no stop.
We aren’t going anywhere.
We’re just going.
Stop thinking about “the end.”
Start thinking about “here, now.”
Start living “here, now,”
based on what is happening “here, now,”
and what needs to be done about it,
in response to it,
with the gifts, art, genius, talent, grace
that is yours to impart,
and offer that,
do that–
in every “here, now” that comes your way
all The Way.

I come from stock that knew what they liked
and what they didn’t like.
They were open to not liking what they did like,
but there was no way they would ever
like what they didn’t like.
Not liking what they did like
was their way of keeping you in line.
Liking what they didn’t like
might have given you the impression
that anything you did would be okay maybe eventually.
That was definitely not the case.
No variation was permitted.
If I hadn’t moved away early,
I would have died soon–
either literally or metaphorically.
I lived among the metaphorically dead
until I escaped beyond the tribal boundary,
but I have a difficult time going back
even today.
History is replete with cultures
that borrowed widely from other cultures,
and with cultures that built walls
and locked themselves away
from all contact with barbarians, heathens, the infidel
who lived outside the gates
and were never allowed inside.
The winds of time favor the cultures
which sailed bravely beyond sight of land
and trusted themselves to their own ingenuity
as their curiosity carried them into strange lands
with strange ideas
that turned out to be brilliant
and transformed how they thought and lived.
If we build walls and hide behind them
we die
literally or metaphorically.
Life is found outside the gates,
beyond the sight of land.

Inertia and lethargy equal laziness.
Laziness is the Cyclops
on the Hero’s Journey.
“It’s too hard.”
“It’s no fun.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“I’m not in the mood for it.”
“It’s not a good time.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Not now.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe later.”
“Some other time.”
This is all that is standing between us
and life as it ought to be lived.
“Eat when hungry/Rest when tired,”
has come to mean,
“Just do what you feel like doing.”
It means:
“Do what the situation calls for
whether you feel like it or not!”
It means:
“Do NOW what needs to be done NOW–
no matter what!”
It means:
“NOW is the time!”
“Do it NOW!
Whatever needs to be done NOW–
past all objections,
obstructions,
resistance,
and disinclination!”
Mindfulness,
Reflection,
Meditation,
Seeing,
Hearing,
Understanding,
Knowing,
Doing,
Being
are all spiritual practices
and are necessary in the work
to change/transform the way things are.
If your spirituality isn’t transforming you
and your life–
the way your life is lived
and the way your world works–
you have been diverted into a religious eddy
away from the current requiring
attention, focus and effort
in the field of action,
challenging the status quo
and making things more like
they ought to be
than they are.
Religion that devotes itself
to thoughts and prayers
is the kind of religion
we all could do without.

12/18/2017 — Propaganda’s unwavering goal
is to immerse us all
in a sea of implanted assumptions
and expectations
to the point where
“everyone knows” the truth of a reality
that is not true,
or real,
at all.

12/18/2017 – When you are lead to believe
that “everybody knows,”
“everybody thinks,”
“everybody believes,”
“everybody feels,”
“everybody does,”
anything,
you are the victim of propaganda
positioning you to recognize
a certain image/person/race/group/religion/product/etc.
in a way that “everybody” would.
Your personal/individual way or assessing reality
has been replaced by a generic, “group think,”
way of seeing the world.
Wake up
and see how you are being led to see
in ways that are suggested to you
in 10,000 subtle ways
throughout the culture.
For example,
evil is never presented as a “Barbie” image.
Evil is always dark/black and sinister.
Heroes never are disheveled, unclean and poorly dressed.
We have cultural assumptions
and profiles
that are implanted by people who are themselves
victims of cultural assumptions and profiles.
Why do we think the way we think?
What makes us think the way we think
is the way to think?
How have we been propagandized to think the way we think?
What are the messages,
the narratives,
the inferences,
that direct our lives unconsciously?
We have to counteract the unconscious influences
by becoming conscious of them
and holding the up to the light of inquiry
and examination.

Endeavor to mindfully live out your days
with grace and compassion,
kindness and tenderness,
gentleness and good faith
for all that comes your way.
This entails
seeing, hearing and understanding
in ways that enable you to know
what is happening
and what needs to happen in response,
and doing what you can do
to help meet that need
with the gifts, genius, talent, art, proclivities
that are yours from birth,
in light of the true good of the whole–
bearing consciously the pain of the contradictions,
and holding all in awareness,
until the proper action arises
in the fullness of time,
allowing you to be at one with yourself
and with the moment,
in each situation as it arises.
This is to be as Zen-like,
as Christ-like,
as Buddha-like,
as You-like,
as you can be in meeting the full truth of the day.
Beyond that,
there is little to ask for,
seek or desire.

The Pilgrims,
and everyone else,
came to the New World
seeking a better life.
We are still seeking it today.
It is all we have ever sought.
You might think,
after all this time,
we would have it figured out.
You might think,
we would know what “better off” means,
and at what point more looking
means making things worse,
and what is worth having,
and what is a mirage
calling us past the good
to the appalling, atrocious, abhorrent…
You might think,
we would know when we are well off–
or well-enough off-
and quit pushing it
in the pursuit of more than we need.
If there is a new world out there–
or just a different one–
it must be better than this one,
and we can’t wait
to put everything on the line
to find out.

12/19/2017 — The weight of Resistance
is the unending nature
of the process.
There is no final victory,
no lasting peace.
There is only eternal vigilance
and ongoing opposition
to the forces of ignorance, fear, hatred, greed, and evil.
It never ends.
The work is that of Sisyphus and Prometheus.
We have to take it up
knowing what we are doing,
and commit to the task
as long as the journey lasts,
raising our children,
and growing old
along the way.

12/19/2017 — The reality of politics is the loss of innocence:
the realization that how things are
is not how things ought to be,
and that people cannot be trusted
to be who they say they are.
Politics is a betrayal of good faith,
a house built of lies,
deception and empty promises.

We have been led to think
that we are going somewhere.
The whole purpose of “here”
is to get “there.”
We are supposed to be getting ahead.
Becoming successful.
Having it made.
This is the ground assumption
of our existence.
We are to make something of ourselves.
What we are isn’t nearly enough.
We have to have ambition,
aspirations,
incentive,

We have to be dissatisfied!
If we aren’t striving to have more,
do more,
be more,
we are a source of shame
upon the entire species,
and the worst thing that could happen
to our ancestral heritage.
Wait! Stop! Enough!
The core cultural assumption is baseless.
We have to immunize ourselves against this plague
upon soul and spirit
by catching ourselves in the act
of being possessed by it
and exorcise the demon
by calling out its deceitful, lying ways–
and turn our full attention
to doing right by the moment at hand.
What is being called for here and now?
What is being asked of us
by the situation at hand?
Meet the moment on its terms
with the best we have to offer–
and do it again in the next moment.
What is called for?
What can we do about it?
How do we prioritize all that is coming at us?
What do we act upon?
What do we dismiss/ignore?
In light of what are we living?
What is guiding our boat
on its path through the sea?
If we listened to our heart,
listened to our body,
and listened to our nighttime dreams,
what would they say
about how we are living our life?
To whom–to what–are we going to listen
in determining what we do with the time
that is ours to live?

There is me
and there is you
and there is us
and there is all of us
and we have to work it out
we have to make it work
for the good of the me
and the you
and the us
and the all of us.
There is one way to do it
and there is one way to not do it.
The way to do it is called “in good faith.”
The way to not do it is called “in bad faith.”
“In good faith” is the way
of integrity,
transparency–
including self-transparency,
so that we live in good faith with ourselves,
and don’t kid ourselves
about who we are and what we are doing,
mindfulness,
openness,
troth,
and dedication to the task at hand,
that is, working it out and making it work.
“In bad faith” is the way
of duplicity and deceit,
and striving to have the advantage
at the expense of someone else,
maybe everyone else.
It al depends on each of us
being who we say we are
and doing what we say we will do,
and we cannot force that upon anyone,
we can only bring it forth in ourselves.
How we deal with the disparity
between being forthright
and protecting ourselves from those
who are not being forthright
is the story of the history of humankind.
Each generation writes its way into that history.
How I do it is up to me.
How you do it is up to you.
How they do it is up to them.
And everything depends upon how it is done.

12/21/2017 — Vote while you can.
Voter suppression
and gerrymandering
are making our vote
less possible,
less likely,
and less significant.
When Texas implemented
a photo ID requirement for voting,
Texas also closed the DMV offices
in counties with a high percentage
of voters who were the wrong color.
When federal courts found this to be unconstitutional,
Texas shrugged,
and said in effect,
“What are you going to do about it?”
The question hangs in the air.
The abuses continue.
Trump’s Voter Integrity Commission
(What a name.
The Republicans name things
with the exact opposite meaning
from what they actually do.
It’s a sly, crafty, slick trick
right out of Nazi Germany’s playbook)
is following a track of making voting difficult,
and people complain,
and suits are filed,
and Trump/The Republicans continue on their way
to the complete control
of the way votes are cast and counted.
Democracy is being redefined, reduced, restricted
by people who are saying
“We aren’t doing anything
and even if we were,
what about Crooked Hillary?”
And consequences aren’t being bought to bear
because the same people are in charge
of both the consequences and the crime.
So vote while you can,
and do not vote Republican.

We are responsible for our perspective–
and for being mindfully aware
of who we are,
what we are doing,
and how we are doing it.
Mindfulness leads the way.
Mindfulness provides
and requires
a certain degree
of silence
and solitude,
and non-judgmental compassion.
If you have an agenda–
an idea of how things should be–
that does not allow for
the right kind of interplay
of these elements,
you are going to make things difficult
for yourself and others.
You are responsible for your perspective.

12/20/2017 — Charleston Harbor Sunset 2017 07 — From Pitt Street in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, December 5, 2017. I flipped the top half of this image and merged it with itself to create the apparent reflection to produce the abstract sunset of colors I love.

Look at it this way:
The game of Solitaire is all religion
in condensed form.
Whatever you say about it
depends on how you see it.
For instance:
“There is no strategy to Solitaire,
it all depends on the cards
you get to play.”
Or:
“Everything depends upon
the strategy you devise through
years of playing,
and how it changes
as your experience deepens.”
Which way is it?
What is the True Doctrine of Solitaire?
It depends on how you see the game.
“God is in charge
and arranges the cards
in every hand.”
Or:
“The cards fall out
in a completely random way.
Chance and ‘The Luck Of The Deal’
”
Our beliefs are what we tell ourselves
to make sense of our experience.
What we believe
determines how we see
(Our perspective)
and how we see
determines what we see
(Our perception)
in a self-validating kind of way.
If we believe white people are superior
(The Religion of White Supremacy–
which often hides under the guise
of Right-wing Evangelical Christianity)
we will see/say facts that confirm our perspective,
and ignore/dismiss facts that refute it.
This is how all superstition
and Bad Religion work,
with people being mindlessly unaware
of how their beliefs create the world
they believe to be The Way The World Is.
The game of Solitaire
is an example of how this works
in our life.
Examples are everywhere.
We build the world we live in,
oblivious to our place in its construction.

Our perspective is
a view point,
a point of view,
a vantage point,
a point in space and time,
a portal into who we are,
and where we have been,
where we have come from,
what has happened to us
and what we have done about it,
with it,
to be who we are as we are
here and now
in every here and now
that comes along.
Our perspective is
all that we are
and can be
at any (in every) particular moment.
It is our way of appraising,
assessing,
evaluating,
ascribing value,
interpreting,
understanding,
defining,
expressing,
exhibiting,
declaring
what has meaning for us
and what does not.
Our perspective is
how we declare
what is significant
and what is not,
what matters
and what does not,
who we are,
and who we are not.
Our perspective is
the most individual,
unique
and defining thing about us–
and when we adopt
a perspective
without thinking about it
examining it,
evaluating it,
assessing it
and affirming
that it does indeed
say all that can be said
about us
and IS indeed who we are
and who we mean to be,
we fail to live in good faith
with ourselves
and one another,
and betray our calling
to be bring forth we are
in relation to all others
who are bringing forth who they are,
and fail to make anything
of ourselves
and the time
that has been given to us,
..
Why?

12/24/2017 — The day before Christmas
was just another day.
So was Christmas.
After your own personal awakening
everything is transformed.
Sober alcoholics can tell you
the day they quit drinking.
When did the light come into your world?
If it hasn’t arrived yet,
what can you do to be open and receptive
to its coming?
Christmas is about the coming of the light
of realization/awareness/understanding–
which is different from knowledge.
Knowing is no substitute for understanding,
for comprehension,
for Aha!
Christmas is about Aha!
We set aside one day each year
to remember our Aha! moment,
to remember all of them,
and to rejoice and be glad
for the turnaround
and the difference it has made in our life.
And, if we haven’t had an Aha!,
Christmas is a reminder of the possibility
and a call to prepare the way of its arrival.
My favorite ways of both celebrating and preparing
are silence and solitude,
and immersion in art, music and nature,
and the practice of seeing what you look at,
and hearing what you listen to,
and feeling what you feel,
and sensing what you sense,
and knowing what you know,
and what you do not know,
and waiting,
trusting that it will all come together
to astound and amaze,
confound and delight
in the fullness of time.
In the meantime we celebrate and prepare for
the experience of Aha!

Perspective is a super weapon
in the same league as a nuclear bomb
or the Elder Wand–
not in terms of protection from
(or prevention of) the unwanted,
but in terms of mitigating its impact
and enabling the right kind of response.
We do not spend enough time and effort
learning to attend, control, develop and master
our perspective.
We think we are helpless before it,
that whatever our perspective is,
it is inborn
and impervious to our efforts
to alter, amend and improve.
No Jedi,
and no wizard or witch,
was born knowing how to use
the powers at her or his disposal.
All had to be trained in the practice
of the magical arts.
Our charge is the same as theirs.
The Ancient Masters of our own realm–
Lao Tzu,
the Buddha,
the Christ–
had only one thing to work with:
Their perspective.
None of them thought,
felt,
saw,
understood,
perceived,
or believed
in the beginning as they did at the end.
As with them,
so with us,
as we take up the task
of becoming aware of,
and working with,
how we think,
feel,
see,
understand,
perceive,
and believe
regarding the worlds
of internal and external reality
and their impact upon us,
and our response to them.
As we do so,
we will be embarking
consciously/mindfully
upon the path of conscientious maturation,
the most powerful tool
in the entire repertoire of tools,
for the transformation of the world
and our place in it.

12/25/2017 — We like not having to think,
not having to confront
our own contradictions,
inconsistencies,
incongruities,
disharmonies,
dichotomies,
polarities,
conflicts,
inner strife…
and bear the pain
of that realization,
and the pain of working things out,
making peace within.
So we don’t.
And that’s the reason
things are as they are.
And the reason
things won’t get better
until we square up with ourselves,
and come to terms with the truth
we live to deny, dismiss, disregard, ignore.
I will if you will.
You go first.

12/26/2017 — A Walk in the Woods Fall 2017 21 — Indian Land, South Carolina, November 26, 2017

We will not think about our thinking
and refuse to practice the art
of mindful,
compassionate,
non-judgmental,
awareness
of ourselves
and our circumstances.
We know what we like,
and what we do not like,
and that is all the knowing
we need to know.
If everyone else would only
do it like we do it,
everything would be fine.

It only takes about 27 seconds
of self-reflection,
self-examination,
self-awareness,
self-inspection,
self-analysis,
self-appraisal,
self-scrutiny,
self-monitoring,
self-assessment,
self-transparency
in order to know
we don’t want to know
“the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“We can’t handle the truth.”
So we spend our time
talking about,
thinking about,
dwelling on,
THEM.
And, of course,
THEY are doing the same thing,
so we never get beyond
hating,
fearing,
despising,
shunning,
shaming,
killing
each other.

12/26/2017 — When you are at-one with your life,
everything falls into place around that.
When nothing is in its place
and rhythm, flow and harmony
have left the country,
or maybe the world,
get yourself back in sync with your life
and the universe will shift
into focus.
We get ourselves in sync with our life
by remembering the things
that mean the most to us,
and doing them the way
they need to be done–
by remembering what matters most,
and serving it with our gifts,
our art,
our talent,
our genius.
When we forget about
trying to exploit our situation
and serve our interest,
and live in ways
that are meaningful to us,
we are in accord with the Tao,
and vibrate with the great AUM
at the heart of life and being.

Whatever our current “path”/experience is–
if we participate fully in it
and cooperate with it–
is preparation for “the journey,”
for what is coming,
for what is next.
Full participation and cooperation
are synonyms for
“being in accord with the Tao.”
Resisting,
opposing,
forcing,
insisting,
demanding,
requiring,
our life to be different than it is
is a lifelong style of living
that puts us at odds with our life
at every point,
and prevents us from being in harmony
and at peace
at any point.
Everybody is seeking a better life,
and it becomes better instantly
when we accept it for what it is,
allow it to be what it is,
and respond to it as it is
in the spirit of
“What is being asked of me here and now?
How can I offer what is appropriate
to the moment
in this moment?
What is this requiring of me?
How can I best comply?”
The moments do not end.
Something else is asked of us
in each one.
It is better to dance
than to complain about the music–
and to get better at dancing
with any music
because the band is always changing tunes.

12/27/2017 — I was a minister for 40 years,
and through that time I developed
a radical idea of religion
that calls for the rejection of all theology/doctrine
and the mining of our personal experience
for encounters with “that which has always been called ‘God’”
in the form of the Numen,
the ineffable,
which comes upon us all from time to time
as we engage our life
as full participants,
cooperating with what is being asked/required of us
in each moment.
We are being “led” to full development/expression
of ourselves through full participation in the experience
of being alive—IF we cooperate by living mindfully,
compassionately, non-judgmentally aware
of what is happening within and without in each moment.
It’s all a process of being alive to the moment of our living,
which prepares us for the next moment–
but there is no “arriving”
or “getting anywhere.”
Just better at living in sync with,
attuned to,
in harmony with,
each moment just as it is.
That’s my take on religion,
having been “in the business” for my career.

12/27/2017 — All organized religion requires
its adherents
to take something “on faith.”
Two things are wrong with this:
1) Why take on faith what they tell you to
and not something else instead?
Why take their religion on faith?
They will tell you you are going to hell
if you don’t–
but you have to take that on faith.
Why would you take that on faith?
If you are going to take something on faith,
why not take evolution on faith,
or global warming?
Or the equality of all people
and equal rights around the world?
Why take going to hell on faith
and insist that evolution be grounded
in solid, irrefutable, fact?
2) Taking anything on faith
means you are taking someone’s word
for it being so, but.
How do they know?
They take it on faith.
Which means they make it up
and convince themselves that it is so,
and now they are trying to convince you
that they know what they are talking about
when they merely made it up.
They don’t have any basis for believing what they believe
other than they believe it
and say it is True Belief, but.
They take it on faith that it is as they say it is.
That’s nonsense.
All belief is self-validating.
That is the basis of superstition.
Believing is seeing in this regard.
Believe something is so
and your experience will eventually confirm it,
and dismiss/discount/disregard/ignore
all evidence to the contrary.
That’s how superstition works.
And Organized Religion.

12/28/2017 — Greed and bad faith
are the source
of all that is evil and demonic.
Generosity and good faith
have their work
cut out for them–
the ground of which
is to not lose heart!

Everything rests upon,
and flows from,
how we interpret,
grasp,
understand,
perceive,
see,
hear,
comprehend
what we look at/listen to.
We decide what things mean,
what they signify,
what they suggest,
imply,
require,
call for–
and what to do about it.
When we are right,
and act accordingly,
we are at one with the Tao,
in the center of God’s will,
grounded upon the bedrock
of truth and value,
in sync with the flow
of life and being.
When we are not,
or don’t,
the world is a wasteland,
madness reigns
and chaos rages across the land.
Look closely,
listen carefully,
see and hear well,
act wisely
in each situation as it arises

Carelessness
and mindlessness,
greed
and bad faith
are the four horsemen
of the Apocalypse.
Don’t house them
in your own barn
or allow them to graze
in your pastures.

Live to do what means the most to you–
what matters the most to you–
while simultaneously doing
what it takes to pay the bills.
In this culture,
and in this sense it is actually
the culture of the entire world,
we value what we do
in terms of the money we make doing it.
We may live our entire life
without making any money
doing what means the most to us, but.
We got to do what was meaningful
our entire life long!
How can you beat that?
Living in the service of what matters most to us
is life at its best–
and we don’t have to do anything to do it,
except do it!

The light has always been the ground of religion.
And always will be.
And darkness, said Rumi,
is the cradle of light.
It is a whole, and is whole,
darkness/light,
good/evil,
love/hate,
all of the dichotomies
and polarities
and contradictions,
war/peace,
chaos/tranquility,
are separated, as Jose Ortega y Gasset might say,
“by the edge of the coin.”
And all waits to be seen as such,
and embraced,
affirmed,
celebrated,
revered,
worshiped,
served,
by those who know
we are part of the whole
and everything belongs–
and put ourselves in accord
with the unfolding
and realization
that is the on-going coming
of the light
in the darkness of life and being.

When you listen to your heart,
to your body
and to your nighttime dreams,
and wind up in a bad place,
keep listening to your heart,
to your body
and to your nighttime dreams
to get out of there!
And dismiss
your fear,
lethargy,
and inertia,
in writing what needs to be written,
and doing what needs to be done,
saying the things that cry out to be said,
asking the questions that beg to be asked,
feeling the things that need to be felt,
thinking the thoughts that need to be thought,
and none of the thoughts that do not,
without worrying about the outcome.
If it leads to fame, fortune and glory,

If it does not,
fine.
Your place is to see what is happening
in each situation as it arises,
and to know what needs to happen in response,
and do what you can do about that
with the gifts, genius, art, abilities
that are yours to serve and to share,
and let that be that–
as you do what it takes to pay the bills,
and walk as many paths at once
as it takes
to get it done,
letting mindfulness,
compassion,
silence,
reflection
and good faith
lead the way.
You will be surprised
at the impact you have
without trying to make an impact–
at the difference you make
not trying to make a difference.
Joseph Campbell said,
“The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”
Live to see what he means
by becoming a vital person,
living in the service
of what is meaningful to you.

12/30/2017 — The developmental tasks
are required in order to
adjust ourselves to the
necessities of each new
stage of life.
There is no “one and done”
on the road to maturity and grace.
Every turn, dip, valley and hill
has its own version
of “the Dark Woods,”
demanding that we
grow up some more again,
forcing us to do what
we do not want to do,
and asking us to
find what it takes
to meet the day
on its terms
which prepares us
bit by bit
to meet every tomorrow.
These tasks are
the initiation rites
required to pass from
one station in life to another,
and cannot be refused
or neglected
without remaining stuck forever
in a world that has passed us by.

If I could give you anything
it would be the ability
to listen with understanding
to everything you hear.
If you hear something
and respond with some variation
of “I know…”
you are not listening with understanding.
It isn’t about what you know.
It is about the level of your understanding.
Do you understand/comprehend/get
the meaning–
the full meaning,
including the implications,
the impact,
and the feelings
that are wrapped up in and around
what you are hearing?
And this applies to what you are hearing within
as well as from without.
What you are saying,
or trying to say,
to yourself
is at the top of the list
of the most important things
you will ever hear.
Are you listening?
With understanding?
Understanding is the heavy part of hearing.
It will weigh you down.
The pain of understanding
is the pain you have to bear
if you are going to listen well.
And that’s the big reason
no one listens to the depth of the pain–
which is to say the reason
no one listens.
Listening with understanding
will take your breath away,
and force you to see the world
in a different way.
And force you to see.
I would give you the ability
to listen with understanding
to everything you hear.

Go with the things that resonate with you
and let the rest fall out
according to how much
it matters to you.
Ground yourself
in the values
that are truly valuable.
Do what is meaningful to you
and live in its service.
If you can find better advice,
take it.

12/31/2017 — We are here in part
to seek and serve
what is meaningful to us.
If our life is not wrapped up
in and around what is meaningful,
we are kidding ourselves
about what is important
and wasting our time on the earth.
How meaningful
is what is supposed to be important?
We answer that question–
and all of the others that matter–
through self-reflection,
self-examination,
self-assessment,
self-awareness,
self-realization,
self-evaluation,
self-appraisal,
self-analysis,
self-knowledge,
self-understanding,
self-direction,
self-correction…
No one else can tell us
the important things.
We have to find our way to them
on our own.

12/31/2017 — To be fully alive,
we have to be living for something
greater than ourselves–
for something that calls us forth
and asks hard things of us.
The things that keep us
from being fully alive
are fear
and lethargy,
and the ease
of saying
“Maybe later.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe one day.”
“Soon, maybe soon.”

01/01/2018 — There is a saying:
“Desperate times
call for desperate measures.”
Too many of us have
never been desperate enough
to know what dangers lurk
in desperation.
Trump and the RMOC are pushing
too many of us to that limit.
In doing away with health care,
In refusing to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program,
In refusing to enact a clean Dreamer’s act,
In putting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security
and other federal programs
(Head Start, School Lunch Programs, etc.)
designed to help people help themselves
in danger of being axed,
the Administration and Congress
are creating desperation
on a level that will equal,
or surpass,
the Great Depression
as we watch.
And. They. Do. Not. Care.
They rather enjoy it.
Because they hate the poor and needy,
the old and the lame,
and all those who are a burden to society.
They reduce the profits
that would be available to the rich-and-greedy-for-greater-wealth,
and need to be disappeared.
Republicans look at these programs
as havens for freeloaders and lay-a-bouts:
“They had rather be on welfare than work!”
Ignoring the numbers of people
who have used the resources offered
by these programs to work their way
out of poverty and into productivity–
and discounting, disregarding, dismissing
the truth that a living wage
would reduce “the welfare rolls”
in a way that is much healthier and hopeful
than ending welfare could ever be.
This is because Republicans
have bought into their own propaganda,
and cannot think things through
to possibilities and destinations
that have been discarded by,
and buried beneath,
three or more generations
of dissing programs providing people
with hope, direction, courage and opportunity.
They cannot see what they will not consider.
And that is where we come in.
We have to vote them out of office,
and not let them back in.
They have abdicated their responsibility
to be good for ALL of the people,
and have demonstrated again and again
that the best future they can imagine
is endless wealth for themselves and their donors.
It is our place to see to it that 2018
is a NEW year in the fullest sense of the term.
Out With The Old! In With The New!
Commit to vote for,
to support,
and to work for the election of
the people who will indeed make America great
by being public servants
of all of the people, all of the time.
A worthy future for us all
depends upon each of us doing at least that much.

We are all vulnerable in our own way.
Facing up to that
and coming to terms with it
is our first order of business
in finding our way
to the service of
all that is meaningful,
indelible
and lasting about us and our life.
Nothing lasts.
Or is meaningful.
It is all useless, pointless, empty and absurd
and coming to a very bad end–
and how we live in the meantime
makes all the difference.
We have to live AS THOUGH
it is all meaningful,
purposeful,
powerful,
significant,
relevant,
consequential,
linear,
valid,
worthwhile,
and coming to an end
that is splendid and glorious
beyond compare.
We all tell ourselves something
about our life.
We all take something on faith.
Make it that,
and live as though it is so.
We have to square up to our vulnerability
and our liabilities.
We have to look our chances in the eye,
and see them for the Cyclops blocking our way
that they are,
gather ourselves,
and say, “So what?”
And live like how we live matters–
Anyway,
Nevertheless,
Even so!
Even here,
Even now,
Even yet.
“And when the heaving sea
has shaken our raft to pieces,
then we will swim!”

01/01/2018 — Carl Jung said,
“Most of our difficulties
come from losing contact
with our instincts,
with the age-old forgotten wisdom
stored up in us.”
Guiding our way along new paths
to an unknown future
are the insights we developed
as a species
along the old paths
of a forgotten past.
We have to get back to what we know
to know what we need to know
to deal with things our early ancestors
could have never imagined.
It’s funny, or strange, or striking,
that it works that way, but.
We have within us all we need
to know what is being asked of us
and how to respond to it,
we only have to learn
how to access it
and then trust ourselves to it.
We begin with our–
you would never guess this–
perspective.
Our perspective is how we see things.
It is what we see when we look at things.
How we see modifies/limits/determines
what we see.
So we start with how we see.
“This isn’t how I SEE things, Jim,”
said the old farmer standing in his field.
“This is how things ARE!”
When we think we see how things ARE
we aren’t seeing our seeing,
or being responsible for the ways
in which we participate in the construction
of our own reality.
The farmer I’m remembering here
was a white supremacist talking about black people.
His ideas of black people did not originate
with his observations of black people,
but from what other white people
had said about black people
from his his birth.
His observations were biased in favor
of his assumptions and expectations
and deepened by what he abstracted/selected
from his experience
and dismissed, discarded, disregarded, denied
about his experience.
How he saw things determined what he saw.
Perspective determines perception.
We have to see our seeing
in order to put some distance
between how we see things
and how things are.
We begin by being mindfully aware of our seeing,
by seeing our seeing,
and asking of everything we “see,”
“What makes it easy for me to see this the way I see it?”
“Where do my ideas about this kind/type of thing come from?”
“Why do I think that the way I see is the way things are?”
We have to get to the bottom of it.
Of all of it.
We have to see that how we see what we look at
is grounded in assumptions/interpretations/expectations
that are, themselves, founded in a worldview
which has little, if anything, to do
with the world we are viewing.
And then wonder,
“If I didn’t see things the way I see things,
how else might I see them?”
Our perspective conceals our inferences.
Our inferences cover up our instincts.
We don’t seek to see, hear, and understand
what we look at
because we KNOW what the truth is already.
Inferences are shortcuts to decision and action.
Never mind thinking, listening, looking, making inquiry!
We have to catch ourselves in the act
of rushing to judgment
and Stop! Look! and Listen!
To get back in touch with
“the age-old forgotten wisdom”
lying latent within.

01/01/2018 — We have to find our own paths,
and make our peace with
the ones we have chosen.
Here we are.
Now what?
The possibilities are infinite,
or close enough.
We have to choose where we go from here
and make our peace with our choices.
and so on
ad infinitum,
or close enough.

01/01/2018 — Our perspective changes
when we become transparent to ourselves
and see ourselves and our seeing,
and evaluate it without having anything
at stake in the outcome,
asking all of the right questions
and reflecting on all of the available facts
and our response to them
(which is, of course, another of the facts
we take into consideration).
Knowing is a matter of understanding
the meaning of what we know
and its implications for us
in the field of action.
When we incorporate all of this
into our perspective,
we see like we have never seen before–
perhaps like no one in the world
has ever seen before.

How we see things
and what we chose to do about it
are two of the tools we use
in constructing the life we live.
The essential third
is our degree of mindful
(compassionate, non-judgmental)
awareness of both seeing and doing.
If we spent more time
developing these three tools
and less time
trying to force our way
through our life,
we would be more firmly grounded
in the things that matter most.

01/02/2018 — It helps to know what our business is,
and what it isn’t.
“Taking care of business”
is a great motto
as long as it is our legitimate business
and not some kind of monkey business.

01/02/2018 — We generally can be trusted
to know when we
are being treated well
and when we
are being treated poorly.
And, we know when others
are being treated well
and when they
are being treated poorly.
We may not be able
to articulate
what it means
to be treated well or poorly,
but we sense it–
we know it–
when we experience it.
My wife thinks cold is in the low 50’s (F) to high 40’s.
I think cold begins at about 65
and gets colder as the temperature
descends from there,
but we both know “cold” when we experience it.
Understanding that there is a continuum
between “well” and “poorly,”
and that everyone in the world,
from the dawn of the species until now,
would fall out somewhere along that line
when it comes to evaluating how they,
and others,
are being treated.
Standing in the center
of the normal distribution curve
along that continuum,
we could say
“This is what being treated ‘well’ means,
and this is what being treated ‘poorly’ means.”
That would be a consensus.
The same would hold true
with being treated
fairly, justly, compassionately, graciously, kindly, etc.
We know it when we experience it.
All of which is to say that
the consensus knows what it is talking about,
and that Donald Trump
and the Republican Members of Congress
can say what they will
about what “great” means,
and what danger immigrants pose is,
and how much more money wealthy people need
to finally be well-off,
but everybody else knows where the truth lies,
and charges of “False Facts”
and “Fake News,”
will not change that in the least.
How we see things is not arbitrary,
but experiential,
and the more fully/completely/consciously/intently
we experience our experience–
reflecting on the allness of our experience,
examining the facts,
exploring the possibilities,
considering our assumptions, inferences, expectations, desires, fears, interests
and the stake we have in the outcome,
asking the questions that beg to be asked,
and looking for all we might be missing–
the more fully we will be able
to assess what is happening
and understand what needs to be done about it
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.
Then, it is only a matter of having what it takes
to do it.
May it be so for each of us forever!

01/02/2018 — Our perspective is our responsibility.
We are responsible
for how we see things
and what we choose
to do about them.
“They said,”
“They are,”
“They think”
“They …”
isn’t enough.
What do YOU say?
What makes you think
what YOU say so?”
How much time in a day
do you spend in
self-reflection,
self-examination,
self-awareness,
self-analysis,
self-correction,
self-determination?
How transparent are you to yourself?
Who is guiding your boat
on its path though the sea?

There is, at least,
an infinite number of ways
of looking at an elephant,
and everything else.
What we “see”
when we look at an elephant,
and everything else,
is a function
of who is looking
and what we are interested in.
If it is a rogue elephant
and we are interested in
getting far away fast,
we will see a certain set of things.
If it is a rogue elephant
and we are interested in
cataloguing the behavior
of rogue elephants,
we will see a completely different
set of things.
The things we see
say more about us
than about the things we see.
Look at something.
Consider it from the standpoint
of Abstraction/Projection.
What we abstract about the thing
is projected onto the thing
by the brain trying
to figure out what the thing is/means.
Whatever we look at
is seen through the filter
of our previous experience
with that thing–
which includes no experience at all.
What does it bring to mind?
What associations does it stir within you?
What feelings does it bring up?
Whatever we look at
is “seen” in its relationship
with all that has gone on with us
before we looked at it.
We do not see anything new.
Everything we “see”
has been “seen” before.
Black people,
White people,
Latino people,
Poor people,
Rich people,
Gay people,
Street people,
Male people,
Female people…
All people/everything
come/comes to us with a history attached–
OUR history with them/it
or things like them/it.
Every objective fact
is interpreted–“seen”–subjectively.
In order to see them/it
relatively separate from us
(our expectations,
assumptions,
inferences,
biases,
prejudices,
)
we have to see
what looking at them/it
brings up in us,
and separate what we are looking at
from who is looking,
and what it says about us
and how that influences
our opinion/judgment/evaluation of it
and its significance for us.
But.
Who would take the time to do that?
Who would take the time to read this
to this point in the writing?
Who cares enough about seeing to see?
And where does that leave us?

01/03/2018 — We cannot be fully aware of anything.
There is more to everything
“than meets the eye.”
We cannot say all there is to say about anything.
Why do we say what we say
and stop there?
“Gay people are _____.”
Put anything in the blank.
Why that and not something else?
Why stop there?
We “abstract”–
that is “reduce it to its essence,”
(with “essence” being
what the person/place/thing
represents/means to us)
something about everything,
and let that abstraction
represent the person/place/thing
in its entirety,
in its wholeness,
and do not think about the person/place/thing
any further–
which is not thinking about him/her/it at all.
Which is living mindlessly unaware
of what we are doing,
serenely untroubled
by the trouble we are creating
through dismissing large aspects of reality every day.
What do we mean
by refusing to know/be aware of/understand
what we mean?
What leads us to emphasize “this”
and discount “that”?
Laziness.
Lethargy.
Fear.
Greed…
Our life is smoother
if we don’t take the time
to pay attention to
what we are doing.
Never mind if that means
living like dead people.
It’s easier that way.

01/03/2018 — What a person/place/thing means
needs to be considered
from the standpoint of
A) What it means in-and-of itself:
its own such-as-it-is-ness,
its own just-as-it-is-ness,
and its place in the world of time/space.
B) What it means, if anything, to itself:
its sense of “I-ness,”
“Me-ness,”
“My-ness.”
or “We-ness,”
“Our-ness.”
C) What it means to other persons or things.
The question,
“What is the meaning of life?”
begs the question,
“To whom?”
Meaning as an absolute,
as a generality,
is vague to the point of uselessness,
and is no more than words about words.
It certainly is unlikely
to grip you in a vice-like passion
and hurl you into your life,
against all odds,
regardless of your chances,
in spite of everything in your path.
What do you mean?
is a better question–
What do you mean with your life?
What do you intend to do with it?
What is meaningful to you?
What is the meaning of you?
What do you serve that is meaningful to you,
that other people equate with you,
and will remember of you,
long after you are gone?